MUMBAI: Mahesh Jethmalani, senior counsel appearing for
Gujarat police officer Rajkumar Pandian argued that the trial court was justified in dropping a criminal case against him in the 2005 ‘fake’ encounter of
Sohrabuddin Shaikh, a gangster with alleged underworld links, as there was no acceptable evidence to link him to the case.
Jethmalani concluded his submissions on Friday before Justice A M Badar who is hearing appeals against discharge granted by the trial court to six accused, all police officers charged with killing Shaikh, his wife Fatimabi in November 2005, and his associate Tulsiram Prajapati a year later. The lawyer said that the two main witnesses who the CBI was relying on –Nathuba Jadeja andGurudayal Chaudhary, both drivers with Gujarat ATS, had repeatedly retracted their statements, hence diminishing their evidentiary value to zero.
Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin’s counsel Gautam Tiwari had said the statements of these two prime witnesses points to Pandian’s presences as it outlines the entire sequence of the abduction of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauserbi near Zahirabad on the way from Hyderabad to Sangli, near
Belgaum, till their allegedly illegal execution in Gujarat on November 26-27, 2005. Jethmalani, in reply, said both the witnesses had first, before the magistrate and later before a special CBI court said the police had forced the statements against Padian from them and disputed claims of corroboration as he argued that there were no independent witnesses—not even one among the 32 persons or the driver on the alleged bus where the alleged abduction took place.
Jethmalani said that there was “unimpeachable evidence to show that Pandian was not in Hyderabad on the day of the alleged abduction.’’He said that Pandian, a Gujarat senior police officer was in Hyderabad but had left by air for Gujarat on November 23, 2005, a “fact fortified by other independent witnesses who booked his air ticket and filled the customs declaration form’’ and hence stressed that Pandian could not have been part of the alleged abduction or encounter.
Jethmalani also said that there was no identification parade done for Pandian and barring Nathuba and Gurudayal, whose statements according to him lacked value, no one else had identified Pandian’s alleged presence at either the bus, the farm or encounter site.
The HC will continue to hear the appeals on Monday.
Sohrabuddin’s brother, the first informant in the case, has challenged the discharge given to three accused--senior IPS officers former deputy inspector general of Gujarat D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian, Dinesh MN while the CBI has separately challenged the trial court orders which were in favour of former Gujarat crime branch officer N K Amin and Dalpat Singh, a police officer from
Rajasthan. Of the nearly 40 accused in the case, the trial court had over a year between August 2016 and September 2017 dropped the case against 15 including the now BJP national president Amit Shah, for want of any prosecutable evidence and lack of prior sanction in some cases.