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Journalism of Courage
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) questioned former Rajasthan home minister Gulabchand Kataria at its Gandhinagar office in connection with the 2006 Tulsiram Prajapati encounter on Thursday,days before its deadline for completing the probe ends on June 30.
Kataria,who is an MLA from Udaipur,drove down to CBI office at Old Sachivalaya in Gandhinagar in the afternoon and was interrogated for over four hours.
While CBI sources said the former minister was questioned in the Tulsiram case,PTI quoted Kataria as saying he was quizzed in connection with the 2005 Sohrabuddin encounter case.
CBI has claimed it has phone call records indicating that Kataria was in frequent touch with police officers from Rajasthan who knew of Tulsirams movement to Gujarat and back.
Tulsiram,said to be an aide of gangster Sohrabuddin,was killed in a joint operation of Rajasthan and Gujarat Police at Chhapri near Ambaji on December 28,2006,nearly a year after Sohrabuddin was killed on November 26,2005.
Tulsiram,according to the CBI,was killed since he knew Sohrabuddin was killed in a fake encounter.
The CBI reconstructed the Tulsiram encounter killing a few days ago at Chhapri.
The Supreme Court had handed over the Tulsiram encounter probe to CBI in April 2011. The agency had served summons to Kataria earlier too,which he had allegedly ignored. The court has asked CBI to complete the probe by June 30.
Following Katarias questioning,former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje,who is now leader of the Opposition in Assembly,said the Congress was using the CBI to settle political scores. The questioning of Gulabchand Kataria in only one amongst many such incidents, Raje said.
