Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Monday upheld the discharge granted by a trial court to ex-Gujarat ATS chief D.G. Vanzara and four others, all of them police officers from Gujarat and Rajasthan, in the case of encounter of suspected gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife and aide.
The court held that the applications challenging their discharge were devoid of merit.
Justice A.M. Badar also granted discharge to Gujarat police officer Vipul Aggarwal, a co-accused in the case related to the 2005-06 encounter of Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife Kausar Bi and their aide Tulsiram Prajapati.
Aggarwal’s discharge plea was earlier rejected by the trial court and he had approached the HC seeking discharge on grounds of parity with Vanzara.
Justice Badar had conducted detailed daily hearings for about two weeks in July on the five revision pleas challenging the discharge of these officers, and the plea filed by Aggarwal.
In granting relief to former IPS officers Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian and N.K. Amin of the Gujarat police, and Dinesh M.N. and Dalpat Singh Rathod of the Rajasthan Police, justice Badar held that the applications challenging their discharge were devoid of merit.
Sohrabuddin Shaikh’s brother Rubabuddin Shaikh had challenged the discharge granted in the case by the trial court to Dinesh, Pandian and Vanzara.
The remaining two revision pleas were filed by the CBI, challenging the discharge granted to Amin and Rathod.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had booked these officials, along with 33 other people, as accused in the “fake” encounters of Sohrabuddin Shaikh, Kausar Bi (in November 2005) and Prajapati (December 2006).
Between August 2016 and September 2017, a special court in Mumbai, where the case was shifted from Gujarat following a Supreme Court order, discharged 15 of these 38 accused.
Those discharged included 14 police officials and BJP president Amit Shah.
“Expected more from the high court”
Expressing his displeasure over today’s order, Rubabuddin Shaikh told The Wire that he expected better from the high court. “There was direct evidence against Pandian and Dinesh. These guys have played a direct role in the abduction of my brother and Tulsi Prajapati. The chargesheet clearly lists out the chain of events, the call data records and independent witnesses whose statements were taken by the CBI. I am surprised how the court did not take this into consideration and only looked at the witnesses who are turning hostile in the CBI trial court,” Rubabuddin said.
All the accused policemen had sought discharge on the ground that prosecution sanction under Section 197 had not been granted.
Of more than 175 witnesses examined so far by the trial court, around 90 have failed to support the prosecution’s case. The high court, while hearing the discharge petition, had on several occasions inquired about the updates in the lower court trial.
Rubabuddin said he is determined to fight this order in the Supreme Court. “I have endured a lot of pain and threat to my life in the past 13 years. I will not stop here. Once I have consulted my lawyer, I will move the Supreme Court,” he told The Wire.
Rubabuddin, who is also a witness in his brother’s murder trial and is yet to depose in the case, said he was served with a summon through a WhatsApp message in the first week of July and since he had met with a road accident, he could not make it to court. “The CBI too has shown no interest in ensuring that justice is delivered in the case. Like other witnesses, I too am under a tremendous pressure. I have received both veiled and direct threats to my life. Several attempts were made to physically harm me over the past year. If the condition does not improve, I might have to drop out from appearing before the court,” he added.
(With PTI inputs)