Mathur says tending to mother,seeks time

Issued summons to appear before the CBI in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case,retired cop O P Mathur has said he is tending to his ailing mother...

Issued summons to appear before the CBI in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case,retired cop O P Mathur has said he is tending to his ailing mother and needed time. Mathur is accused of tampering with the evidence collected by the CID during a previous investigation into the case. He allegedly also stopped Inspector V L Solanki from going to Rajasthan to probe the Tulsiram Prajapati angle in the case.

Mathur had been issued summons for Monday. More than four hours after he was scheduled to appear,the CBI got Mathurs letter saying his mother had suddenly taken ill.

The CBI has now decided to wait for two days more before deciding on what to do.

A top CBI official said Mathur has promised to show up in a few days as soon as my mother is fine. I had appeared before the CBI in a previous summons issued in April and would depose this time too… I am ready to follow the procedure of law, he has written.

Retired cop G C Raigars deposition to the CBI on Monday in the case has made things worse for Mathur,who had succeeded Raigar as CID chief.

Raigar has told the CBI that Mathur worked on the instructions of then DGP P C Pande and Amit Shah… The CBI has collected enough evidence against Mathur,especially from the depositions of Raigar and previous depositions of IPS officer Rajneesh Rai and Geetha Johri, an officer said.