Rubabuddin Sheikh, brother of Sohrabuddin, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter, today approached the Bombay High Court challenging the discharge of former Gujarat ATS chief D G Vanzara and Rajasthan IPS officer Dinesh M N from the case.
A special CBI court here had last week discharged Vanzara and Dinesh after observing that there was no prima facie evidence against them.
Rubabuddin, in his petition filed in the high court, however, claimed that there was sufficient evidence on record to establish that Sohrabuddin was "abducted, kept in wrongful confinement" and that he and his aide Tulsidas Parajapati, were killed in a fake encounter.
According to the CBI, Sohrabuddin, a gangster with alleged links to Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and his wife Kausar Bi, were abducted by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad from Hyderabad when the couple was on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra.
Sheikh was killed in an alleged fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005, after which his wife disappeared. According to the CBI, she too was killed.
Prajapati, Sheikh's aide and an eyewitness to the alleged encounter, was later killed by police at Chapri village in Gujarat's Banaskantha district in December 2006, the Central agency claimed.
Rubabuddin's petition will come up for hearing in the due course of time.
Vanzara, an IPS officer, was arrested on April 24, 2007 by the Gujarat CID in Sohrabuddin encounter case, which was later handed over to the CBI. He was heading the Gujarat ATS when the alleged fake encounters took place.
Dinesh M N had served seven years in jail in connection with the alleged fake encounter killings. He was granted bail in May 2014. He was promoted by the Rajasthan government to the post of Deputy Inspector General and then Inspector General with effect from May 9 the same year.
The Sohrabuddin killing case was transferred to Mumbai in September 2012 at the request of CBI for a fair trial. In 2013, the Supreme Court had clubbed the alleged fake encounter case of Prajapati with that of Sheikh.
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