Two more witnesses have been termed hostile in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati alleged fake encounter cases, taking total count of such witnesses to 70.
Bhupat Singh, head constable of Gujarat Railway Police, and Shabbir Khan, constable at Ahmedabad railway police station, deposed before the Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court.
Both the witnesses stated in court that on December 27, 2006, while they were patrolling the bogies of Udaipur Mail together, they saw four to five Rajasthan policemen travelling in a bogie. They said that they remember seeing an accused in the custody of the policemen.
Mr .Raju brought to the attention of the court that in their statements recorded by the Gandhinagar branch of CBI on June 10, 2011, both the witnesses had said that they had seen the policemen from Rajasthan. However, they had claimed that they did not remember “if they had seen any accused in their custody”.
On being asked why he made contradictory statements, Mr. Khan said, “It has been several years. I don’t remember clearly.” The witnesses were then declared hostile by CBI Prosecutor B.P. Raju before judge S.J. Sharma.
On Monday, two other witnesses in the case, Ghanshyam, a guard, and Heera Lal Ahari, assistant driver of the train that took Prajapati back to Udaipur, were also declared hostile.
On November 23, 2005, Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a gangster, was travelling on a Hyderabad-Sangli bus along with his wife Kausarbi and friend Prajapati. They were allegedly abducted by a team of policemen attached to Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad and members of the Special Task Force from Rajasthan.
The couple was illegally detained at a farm house near Gandhinagar and two days later, Sheikh was killed in an alleged fake encounter. Kausarbi and Prajapati too were later found killed in encounters.
