4 min readMumbaiNov 28, 2018 03:53 AM IST
First published on: Nov 28, 2018 at 03:52 AM IST
On Tuesday, the court heard seven of the accused. (Representational)
Accused in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati alleged fake encounter cases on Tuesday claimed that junior officers like themselves were “falsely implicated in a concocted case” due to “political motive” and “rivalry among their seniors”. After the CBI concluded its evidence last week, the court has begun the hearing of accused as per provisions of Section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
On Tuesday, the court heard seven of the accused, including the then deputy superintendent of Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad, M L Parmar, sub-inspectors Balkrishna Chaubey, Himanshu Singh Rawat, Shyam Singh Charan, constables Ajay Parmar and Santram Sharma, and a farmhouse owner Rajendra Jirawala. The court has also partly heard the then Rajasthan police inspector, Abdul Rehman.
“I was falsely chargesheeted. A false case was prepared due to a political motive and because of rivalry among senior IPS officers. We, the juniors, including myself, were falsely implicated in this concocted case,” Chaubey told the court. The other officers, including Rawat and Charan, also made similar submissions before Special Judge S J Sharma.
All IPS officers among the 38 initially booked as accused have been discharged from the case. The current 22 accused include officials who held the ranks of police constables, sub-inspectors, assistant inspectors, inspectors and a deputy superintendent. On Monday, the court had heard former police inspector, N H Dabhi, who had claimed that the case is the result of “police and political rivalry”.
According to the CBI, Sohrabuddin, his wife Kausarbi and associate Tulsiram were abducted from a bus while they were en route to Sangli in Maharashtra from Hyderabad in November, 2005. The CBI claims that while Tulsiram was sent to Rajasthan and shown to have been arrested from Bhilwara on November 26, 2005, Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi were detained in farmhouses in Gujarat. On November 26, 2005, Sohrabuddin was shown to have been killed in an alleged fake encounter in Ahmedabad and Kausarbi, too, was subsequently killed. Tulsiram was killed in an alleged fake encounter over a year later on December 28, 2006. The CBI has alleged a distinct role to each of the accused, with a common criminal conspiracy charge on all of them.
As part of the Section 313 proceedings, each of the accused is responding to 441 questions put to them, giving their defence on each of the prosecution’s claim.
On Tuesday, Rehman told the court that the CBI had pressurised four Rajasthan officers to give false evidence against him. When they appeared as prosecution witnesses in the last few months, all four of them had denied that Tulsiram was arrested on November 26, 2005, as was the CBI case, stating instead that he was arrested on November 29. Rehman claimed the discrepancy in dates was part of the CBI’s own chargesheets filed in 2010 and 2011.
He also told the court he was part of the team, under the supervision of the then Udaipur superintendent, that was probing Tulsiram’s alleged involvement in a murder case in January, 2005. He also said that he was part of the two police teams that escorted Tulsiram to Ahmedabad court from Udaipur in 2006, under the supervision of the senior police. The then Udaipur SP, Dinesh M N, has been discharged from the case. Rehman also said that as per the CBI evidence, it was still not proven whether the third person in the bus with Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi was Tulsiram. He also disputed the FIR filed by him.
The accused claimed that there was no evidence put forth against them by the CBI proving that they were part of any criminal conspiracy.
On Tuesday, the court heard seven of the accused. (Representational)
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