Mumbai, Feb. 2: The Central Bureau of Investigation’s special crime branch, Zone II, Mumbai, on Monday registered a case of murder and under other sections of the Indian Penal Code against unnamed officers of the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad and Rajasthan’s Special Task Force in the 2005 killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausarbi, allegedly in a fake encounter. The CBI registered the case on the directions of the Supreme Court.
A joint team of the Gujarat and Rajasthan police forces had allegedly picked up Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi, and his aide Tulsi Ram Prajapati, on November 22, 2005 and killed them in fake encounters.
The police officers have been booked for murder, criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, wrongful confinement and destroying evidence under Sections 302, 120 (B), 365, 368 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code.
"We have not named any officers in the FIR but will start adding names as our investigations progress," said a senior official of the Central Bureau of Investigation. According to the official, a CBI team has been dispatched to Ahmedabad to conduct enquiries and take over the case property from the Gujarat CID department, which had chargesheeted 14 police officials, including senior IPS officers.
The case had turned into a major embarrassment for the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat after the Supreme Court had slammed the state government’s probes, saying that there were factual discrepancies in the chargesheet. "It cannot be questioned that the offences the high police officials have committed were of a grave nature and need to be strictly dealt with," the Supreme Court had said while directing the CBI to probe the case. The Supreme Court had criticised the Gujarat government for failing to conduct impartial investigations.
Age Correspondent