Tacitly admitting Tulsi Prajapati's shooting as a case of “fake encounter,” the Gujarat police on Friday filed a charge sheet against seven policemen, including the then Banaskantha Superintendent of Police Vipul Agrawal.
The charge sheet was filed in the district's Danta court, which has jurisdiction over the area Prajapati, a close associate of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, was killed in an “encounter” on the highway near the Chapri village, close to the Gujarat-Rajasthan border, on December, 28, 2006.
According to Deputy Superintendent of Police CID (Crime) R.K. Patel, the investigating officer in the Prajapati case, the charge sheet charging Mr. Agrawal, police inspector Ashish Pandya and five constables with murder, kidnapping, forging documents, destroying evidence, among other charges, was 1,000-page long, listed 147 witnesses and declared four police constables of the Rajasthan cadre as “absconders.”
Deputy Inspector General (Border Range) B.S. Jebalia, however, claimed it named nine guilty officers, including the former DIG, D.G. Vanzara, the principal accused in the Sohrabuddin case, and the then Udaipur DSP, Dinesh Kumar.
The charge sheet, however, is silent on the former Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, recently arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as one of the main accused in the Sohrabuddin case.
While the Gujarat police has admitted before the Supreme Court that Sohrabuddin's encounter in November 2005 was “fake,” this is the first time that the CID (Crime), by filling the charge sheet, has admitted that Prajapati was also killed in a fake encounter.
Ishrat case
The High Court has already ordered a fresh probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into whether the encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others was also “fake,” while taking up the hearing of a petition demanding fresh investigation into the killing of Sadiq Jamal, also suspected to be a victim of a fake encounter.
The CID (Crime) filed the charge sheet in the Prajapati case, even as the CBI submitted its status report on the Sohrabuddin case in the Supreme Court on Friday. After months of lethargy, the State police suddenly speeded up the investigation into the Prajapati encounter, apparently to pre-empt the CBI from taking over the case since the apex court was also of the opinion that Sohrabuddin and Prajapati encounters could be related.
The CBI arrested Deputy Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad Crime Branch, Abhay Chudasma, in connection with the Sohrabuddin case on April 28. The CID (Crime) swung into action and arrested Mr. Agrawal in May when he was posted as the Dahod DSP.
Later Mr. Pandya was picked up from Rajkot, as were the five constables, to ensure that the investigation was not taken over by the CBI.
With the permission of the Danta court, the CID (Crime) interrogated Mr. Vanzara and Mr. Kumar in connection with the Prajapati encounter. Later, it sought permission to conduct narco-analysis and brain mapping tests on grounds that the IPS officers were not co-operating, but the court did not grant permission because the accused were not prepared for the tests.
Meanwhile, the CBI continued to interrogate Mr. Shah in the Sabarmati Central Jail for the third day on Friday, and also sent a team to search the former Minister's residence, apparently to run a check on funds allegedly collected from Sohrabuddin's extortion racket. It has, reportedly, asked the Income Tax Department for the last 10 financial years' returns filed by Mr. Shah and the other accused in the jail, and requested the department to investigate whether the property owned by them matched their known sources of income.
