Mumbai, Jan. 16: The Maharashtra government today agreed to pay Rs 3 lakh in damages to the family of Khwaja Yunus, a terror suspect who allegedly died in police custody during investigations into the 2002 Ghatkopar bus blasts.

Special public prosecutor Satish Borulkar told Bombay High Court the state was willing to pay only Rs 3 lakh, not Rs 20 lakh as demanded by the family. Yunus’s mother Aasiya Begum will get the money.

The court directed the Vilasrao Deshmukh government to file an affidavit by February 14, explaining why it had sanctioned the prosecution of only four police officers when a state CID probe had named 14 in the custody death.

Yunus, a 26-year-old software engineer based in the UAE, was picked up on December 23, 2002, days after an explosion in a BEST bus killed two persons and injured 49.

Yunus and Abdul Mateen Basit, a forensic medicine expert from Mumbai, were among nine suspects held. On January 3, 2003, officials claimed Yunus had escaped from a police van going to Ahmednagar. Aasiya Begum then moved the high court for a CBI probe.

Yunus’s body could not be traced but Basit told the court he had seen the engineer vomiting blood after the police tortured him the night before he allegedly disappeared.