Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram ‘fake’ encounter cases: 4 witnesses depose before court

On November 22, 2005, Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi boarded a private luxury bus from Hyderabad to go to Sangli, Maharashtra, to visit a doctor.

In the Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati alleged fake encounter cases, four persons including three policemen and a tehsildar deposed before the special CBI court on Tuesday.

One of the witnesses, a policeman posted at Himmat Nagar outpost with the Government Railway Police, told the court that he was informed by his senior regarding a prisoner escaping from custody from a train in their jurisdiction. He was sent to the spot where he had met four officers of the Rajasthan Police, who were guarding the prisoner before the escape. He further told the court that a mobile phone was found on the tracks and seized.

While in his earlier statement to the CBI, the witness had claimed that he had not seen any chilli powder in the eyes of two policemen — Yudhvir Singh and Kartar Singh — he did not mention that part of his statement before the court on Tuesday.

The policemen claim that Tulsiram had escaped from custody while being brought back from Ahmedabad court to Udaipur by throwing chilli powder in their eyes.

The CBI, however, claims that this was staged to show that Tulsiram had escaped and then subsequently killed in an encounter on December 28, 2006.
Two other witnesses, constables attached to police stations in Udaipur in 2006, told the court that they were assigned the duty of escorting a prisoner, but they did not go due to some reason.

While one of them said he had been asked to go in November, 2006, the second witness gave two dates — one in November and again in December — when he was asked to accompany prisoners to Ahmedabad.

The fourth witness, a tehsildar, as an executive magistrate had conducted the inquest of Sohrabuddin’s body as part of the judicial inquiry on November 26, 2005 at the civil hospital in Ahmedabad. The official told the court that he had been called by a policeman to the hospital and thereafter in the presence of two panch witnesses, he had conducted the inquest, making note of all the injuries and marks on Sohrabuddin’s body.