All 22 accused let off for want of proof in Sohrabuddin case

All remaining 22 accused, mostly junior level police officers, in the alleged encounter killings of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kausar Bi, and associate, Tulsiram Prajapati, were acquitted on Friday by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court, which cited insufficient evidence even as it expressed sorrow over the loss of three lives.

Several others have already been discharged in the case. At one point, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah was arrested with regard to the case (and released on bail), but he was discharged in December 2014.

Other high profile accused discharged in the case are former Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria and police officers from three states, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, including two former Gujarat director generals of police PC Pande and Geeta Johri and deputy inspector general DG Vanzara.

“I feel sorry for the families, since three lives were lost, but I am helpless,” said additional sessions judge SJ Sharma on Friday, pointing out that the “system requires courts to go strictly by substantive evidence on record and there is no substantial evidence” to hold the accused guilty in the case.

The judge, who delivered his last judgment before retiring, said that on the basis of evidence on the record, he could not hold the accused responsible for the death of Sheikh and Kausar Bi.

“When this court ultimately went through all the evidence and testimonies on record, it concluded that no case of conspiracy could be established. Also, no link between these 22 persons and the three deaths could be established,” he said.

Sheikh’s brother, Rubabuddin Sheikh, who was present in court on Friday, said he was disappointed at the verdict and would contest it in the Supreme Court.

CBI spokesperson RK Gaur declined comment on the grounds that the agency had not received a copy of the order. After the judge pronounced the verdict, all the accused, who were present in court, congratulated and hugged each other.

Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan claimed that the way eyewitnesses turned hostile and all accused were acquitted on account of lack of evidence proved that the CBI was working under pressure and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was responsible for this.

State BJP spokesperson Madhav Bhandari said: “Those who misinformed everyone over the encounter case have been exposed now. They all should apologise before the country.”

Of the 22 accused, 21 are junior police officers from Gujarat and Rajasthan, who, the CBI said, were part of the teams that abducted the three and later killed them in staged encounters.

The last accused was the owner of the farm house in Gujarat where Sheikh and Kausar Bi were, according to CBI, illegally detained before they were killed.

The 13-year-old case saw several twists and turns, including 92 prosecution witnesses turning hostile, and 16 accused getting discharged during the course of the hearing since 2014. “Key witnesses of the prosecution turned hostile, due to which the abduction of Sohrabuddin and further sequence of events has not been proven,” the court said. “Two main prosecution witnesses turned hostile. What could the prosecution have done? It couldn’t have forced them not to turn hostile,” the judge said.

This year saw a more curious twist to the case with the emergence of the theory that Judge BH Loya, presiding over the CBI court at the time, died in peculiar circumstances on November 30, 2014. The Supreme Court in April dismissed multiple petitions demanding an inquiry into Loya’s death.

The CBI said the three victims who were returning to Sangli in Maharashtra from Hyderabad in a bus were taken into custody by a police team on the intervening night of November 22-23, 2005. The couple was taken in one vehicle and Prajapati in another. CBI alleged that Sheikh was killed on November 26, 2005, by a joint team comprising Gujarat and Rajasthan police, and Kausar Bi three days later. Prajapati, who was lodged in Udaipur central jail, was killed in an encounter on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border on December 27, 2006, the CBI said in the charge sheet.

The CBI took over investigation from the Gujarat’s crime investigation division on orders of the Supreme Court in 2010 and claimed that Prajapati was a key witness to the abduction, as he was travelling with the slain couple, and a joint police team of Gujarat and Rajasthan police killed him in a fake encounter apprehending that he could spill the beans.

On Prajapati’s alleged encounter killing, the special court said, the prosecution failed to prove that the third person with the couple was Prajapati. “Till 2011, nowhere it came on record that Prajapati was the eye witness to abduction of Sheikh and his wife,” the court said, adding that it was only in the fourth supplementary charge sheet that CBI revealed the identity of the third person accompanying the couple as Prajapati.

The court said that the prosecution failed to prove that Prajapati had been abducted from Ahmedabad and was taken secretly by two people. The court observed that, “In fact the prosecution witnesses have testified that he was seen in train with guards with his hands tied. The prosecution failed to prove involvement of the then Gujarat top cop DG Vanzara in the conspiracy,” the court said.

Sharma said that the court cannot rely solely on “circumstantial and hearsay evidence” while acquitting the remaining accused in the one of the most high profile encounter cases in India in this century.

First Published: Dec 21, 2018 23:51 IST