CBI team visits spot of Prajapati’s 2006 encounter

The 10-member team headed by CBI joint director P Kandaswamy visited Chhapri village near Ambaji where Prajapati was killed in a police encounter on December 28,2006.

The CBI team inspected the spot on the Danta-Ambaji Highway in the run-up to the recreation of the encounter which the agency plans to do in the coming days. The team was on the spot for over one hour.

Former investigating officer in the case,R K Patel of the state CID,was also present at the spot and was seen explaining how the encounter took place to the CBI team.

Before,visiting the spot near Chhapri village,the team visited the Ambaji temple here.

Yesterday,the core team of the CBI had met at its Gandhinagar office to chalk out the line of investigation into the case. They are also examining the papers obtained from the state CID,which was investigating the case earlier.

The reports and other documents,including the chargesheet filed by the CID,were in Gujarati language which are being translated into English,CBI sources said.

The case was transferred to CBI from the state CID following the orders of the Supreme Court on April 8 on a petition filed by Prajapati’s mother Narmada Bai who alleged that her son was killed in a fake encounter by the Gujarat police as he was a key eyewitness in the November 2005 killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh.

The CBI had on April 29 registered an FIR in the Prajapati encounter case against “the police officials of Gujarat and Rajasthan state and others”.

The state CID too had registered an FIR in connection with the case last year at the Ambaji police station. Seven policemen,including IPS officer Vipul Agarwal,were arrested in the case.

Three suspended IPS officers — D G Vanzara,Rajkumar Pandiyan and Dinesh M N — who are accused in the 2005 Sohrabuddin encounter case — have also been shown as accused in the Prajapati case by the CID.