A special CBI court on Monday dropped charges against former Geetha Johri, former Gujarat additional director general of police, for want of mandatory sanction from the state government before filing charges against her in the fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati. Special judge M B Gosavi observed: “The prosecution against accused Geetha Johri stands dropped for want of sanction under Section 197 CrPC.” As per the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) section, the prosecution is required to secure a sanction from the state government to prosecute a serving public servant. Johri was Inspector-General of Police (CID) when she was supervising the investigation into the Sohrabuddin encounter case. She was accused of delaying the probe conducted by her subordinate officer V L Solanki and tampering with the evidence in the case. “Johri had delayed in allowing Solanki to interrogate the prime witness in the case, Prajapati. She accepted his requested to interrogate Prajapati at a later date, but Prajapati was murdered,” said Anubha Rastogi, lawyer for the complainant and Sheikh’s kin Rubabuddin. Rastogi also claimed that according to the CBI chargesheet, Johri had delayed sending the inquiry report made by Solanki to the Supreme Court. The inquiry report, supervised by Johri, confirmed that the encounter was staged, thus leading to the arrest of several senior police officers, including DIG DG Vanzara, SP Rajkumar Pandian and Dinesh MN. According to Johri’s application in court, she was only discharging her official duties during the investigation of the case and to prosecute her mandatory sanction from the government must be obtained. Gosavi on December 30, 2014 had discharged BJP president Amit Shah in the encounter case after holding that there existed “no case” against him and that he could have been implicated for “political reasons”.
