One more witness turned hostile while two deposed on Wednesday in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati alleged fake encounter cases. Altogether 71 out of 108 witnesses have turned hostile in the case.
Rakesh Adhikari, a serviceman working in Bansari theatre in Ahmedabad, denied in a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court that he was ever taken by the CBI’s Gandhinagar officials to a place where Kausarbi, Sohrabuddin Sheikh's wife, was cremated.
According to his statement recorded by the CBI on April 16, 2010, Mr. Adhikari was taken to the cremation site near Dhavdi river in Ilol village in Gujarat. The statement also said a videographer had recorded the measurements of the dam. Mr. Adhikari’s statement said the video cassette was sealed in his presence, for which he signed a panchnama, and the cassette was produced in court.
Mr. Adhikari told the CBI public prosecutor B.P. Raju during his examination that two to three CBI officials had visited his workplace and asked him to sign a panchnama. “I don’t know how to read and write, I simply signed it,” he said. On this, Mr. Raju pleaded with the court to declare him hostile.
Two other witnesses, Pannabhai Vanzara and Kantibhai Parmar, both chabimen , said in their deposition before special CBI judge S.J. Sharma that their signatures were taken on a panchnama in the office of the station master at Shamlaji railway station, from where Prajapati is alleged to have escaped. They said, the Gujarat railway police took their signatures without them being informed of its contents.
However, in the statements recorded by the CBI in Gandhinagar on June 17, 2006, they had both said they had been called to the station master’s office where they were told by Gujarat Railway police officials that an accused (Prajapati) had thrown chilli powder in the eyes of some Rajasthani policemen and escaped.
The witnesses were accordingly made to sign the panchnama.
