Mumbai: Saeedunissa Ansari, mother of 2006 Mumbai train blasts convict Kamal Ansari, has written to the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, State Human Rights Commission and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray seeking a judicial inquiry into her son’s death, calling it a case of custodial death.
51-year-old Ansari died on Monday a little after midnight in Nagpur Government Medical Hospital. The Nagpur Central Jail informed the family that he died of Covid-19. The family complains that they were never informed that he had tested positive for the virus and had learnt on their own about his hospitalisation.
In the letter written by Saeedunissa Ansari through her advocate Ibraheem KM, she said that she had learnt unofficially that he was hospitalized and had called the jail on April 12, but that the jail authorities only gave her evasive answers and did not let her speak to him. She had come to Nagpur jail on April 17 and it is then that authorities told her that he is in hospital, but had initially tried to 'hide' something. She went to hospital and there too, she said, the officers were reluctant to tell her about Ansari’s condition, but when she warned she will complain against them, they told her that he was admitted in special ward. She was not allowed to meet him.
Thereafter, she said doctors and officers laughed at her when she inquired about her son from outside the ward and told her that they will definitely give her a bad news. He was unconscious at this point, her letter says.
The mother said that the death is “totally mysterious” and called it a “custodial death” and sought a judicial inquiry into it.
Nagpur jail superintendent on Monday told FPJ that Ansari was admitted to the hospital on 9 April as a precautionary measure as he showed Covid-19 symptoms. He had said further that the family was not informed that he was Covid-19 positive as the report of the 8 April RT-PCR test had not arrived.
Ansari was convicted in 2015 with 11 others for the serial blasts on 11 July 2006 in first class compartments of the city’s suburban locals. Four others with him had received the death sentence. Ansari’s appeal against his conviction was pending before Bombay HC.
