Tulsiram Prajapati
IN THE Tulsiram Prajapati alleged fake encounter case, a panch witness turned hostile on Tuesday, denying the police had seized any bullets or clothes belonging to Prajapati in his presence on December 28, 2006.
According to his statement to the CBI, he had said that he was at a hospital at Ambaji in Gujarat — where his nephew was admitted — when the accused policemen approached to make become a panch witness for seizure of Prajapati’s clothes and bullets used in the alleged encounter.
On Tuesday, the witness told the court that the police had called him to the police station, where he and his friend were made to sign on some document. He denied being at the hospital altogether. When alive, Tulsiram had claimed that he had witnessed the abduction of wanted criminal Sohrabuddin Shaikh and his wife Kausarbi by policemen from Gujarat and Rajasthan in November 2005 and thus, was apprehensive about being killed in a staged encounter.
The CBI had claimed that Sohrabuddin was killed in an alleged fake encounter soon after his abduction, following which, Kausarbi was killed too. Following Tulsiram’s death, the accused policemen had claimed that while returning from a court hearing in Ahmedabad to Udaipur jail, Tulsiram had tried to escape and was therefore killed. Another witness, a regional transport officer from Hyderabad, told the court on Tuesday that he had responded to a query sent by an officer of the Gujarat CID regarding a vehicle registration number.
The CBI has claimed that as part of a conspiracy, the Gujarat Police team had traveled to Hyderabad in 2005 to abduct Sohrabuddin Shaikh in a Qualis car with a false number plate. The witness told the court that he had then said that the number in question had not been allotted to anyone so far and therefore was false.
The third witness to depose was a former associate of Sohrabuddin. He told the court that he knew Sohrabuddin and that he was also his co-accused in a case and his co-inmate at Sabarmati jail. He added that Sohrabuddin was extorting money from marble owners in Rajasthan and had asked him to join him but he had refused.