Friday, February 18 2005 17:54 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Suspended Deputy Commissioner of police (DCP) Pradeep Sawant today (Feb 18, 2005) deposed before a special court as defence witness in the case of suspected terrorist Mohammed Afroze saying he (Sawant) and top police officers had visited USA and UK to probe his alleged role of accused in Al-Qaeda operations.

Sawant was summoned by the special court as a defence witness on a plea by the afroze's lawyer Mubin Solkar.

He was earlier arrested by the Special Investigation team (SIT) in connection with the Telgi scam and is presently on bail.

Afroze was arrested on December 3, 2001 on charges of conspiring with Al-Qaeda to bomb House of Commons, Parliament house and Radio Towers in Australia.

He was the first person to be booked under the Prevention of Terrorist Act in the city on March 1, 2002.

However, the POTA charges against him were dropped due to lack of evidence.

The defence has already examined Assistant Commissioner of police Ramakant Padwal, who was then investigting officer and police inspectors Dilip Patil and Vijay Joshi.

The court has also summoned former Police Commissioner M N Singh and also former deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal. They are yet to depose.

Mr V Pradhan, also Afroze's lawyer, told the court that the line of examination was to show that the police team had not carried out the investigtion properly. He said, "All are interested in passing on the buck to other officer."

During examination, Sawant told the court that the investigating officer Padwal had informed him about invoking POTA against Afroze and also about dropping POTA charges against the accused.