On Friday, a special CBI court in Mumbai acquitted all 22 accused in the Sohrabuddin Shiekh fake encounter case. While 21 accused were junior-level police officials from Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, and one accused was the owner of the farmhouse where Sheikh and his wife were kept before the alleged murder. Reading its order the CBI court Judge S.J Sharma said, “Government machinery and prosecution put in a lot of effort, 210 witnesses were brought but satisfactory evidence didn’t come and witnesses turned hostile. No fault of the prosecutor if witnesses don’t speak.” Out of the 210 witnesses brought in by the prosecution, 92 have turned hostile.
Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a gangster, and his wife Kauser Bi were killed in an alleged ‘fake encounter’ in 2005 by the Gujarat Police. Later in 2006, his aide Tulsi Prajapati was killed in another alleged ‘fake encounter’ in a joint encounter by the Gujarat and the Rajasthan police. The BJP chief Amit Shah was also an accused in the case, but later all the charges against him were cleared by the various courts in India.
For more details: Amit Shah and Sohrabuddin case: The saga of a political witch hunt
For those who would not know the exact minute details of the Sohrabuddin encounter case, Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauser Bi were intercepted by the Gujarat Police when they were en route to Sangli (Maharashtra) from Hyderabad on a Public Bus on Nov 23rd, 2003. Sohrabuddin was a dreaded gangster who was operating out of Gujarat & Madhya Pradesh, and one of his noble activities was gun-running. He had contacts with the Underworld and some of his noble contacts included Dawood Ibrahim. He was involved in a number of extortion and murder cases in both the states and seemed to operate freely and without fear in Gujarat & Madhya Pradesh. This was until 2002 when Narendra Modi took charge of the state. Soon, Sohrabuddin was forced to flee and change his base to Hyderabad.
On November 26, 2005, Sheikh was eliminated in an alleged fake encounter and three days later his wife was also killed by the police, and her body was disposed of, the CBI said. A year later, on December 27, 2006, Tulsi Prajapati was also shot dead by Gujarat and Rajasthan police in an alleged fake encounter near Chapri on Gujarat-Rajasthan border.
Reacting on the development, DG Vanzara, who was also formerly accused in the case, said, “The encounters that were done by the Gujarat Police were genuine but an investigation was carried out against Gujarat Police. 52 witnesses turned hostile. The process of law dictates that if there is evidence, you will find it. No evidence was found because the encounter was genuine. The law-abiding citizens of the country should be happy that the honest get justice and this is what has happened.” He also added, “Gujarat Police became a victim of a conspiracy. Our encounter was genuine but became embroiled in a political struggle between Gandhinagar and Delhi. We were not aligned with any party, but sometimes politics becomes so dirty. There should never be politics over terrorism. Due to this dirty politics, we had to roam from court to court for nine years.”
IPS officer Narendra Amin, who was an accused in the Sohrabuddin case, expressed his happiness over the verdict and tweeted that “Late but not the least ultimately justice is done. ” (sic)
https://twitter.com/drnkamin/status/1076013194408189952
A terrorist was eliminated by brave policemen, but the media and the Congress ecosystem instead of praising the valor of our policemen decided to demonize them. The entire dominant coalition was hell bent upon proving a genuine encounter as fake and tried to frame cops and their political rivals in it. Earlier Amit Shah and 15 others were exonerated in the case, and now 22 others have also been acquitted.
