Fake-Encountered
- Very little material evidence has
been collected
- Statements of the accused as well
as key witnesses have not been recorded before a magistrate
- Confessions before an
investigating officer can always be retracted in court
- Excavations in Vanzara's farmhouse
have drawn a blank
- No witness has turned approver
***
Forget
newspaper headlines of confessional statements by the police officers
involved and other breakthroughs, the investigation into the
Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case is floundering. With the May 15
deadline for the submission of its status report to the Supreme Court
fast approaching, the state CID is doing what it can best to prove that
its investigations are on stream. But according to police sources,
there is very little material evidence that has been unearthed.
Instead, statements of the accused and several witnesses have been
recorded in an effort to show that the investigations are on course and
that a CBI probe is not warranted as demanded by the Centre as well as
Sohrabuddin's brother. The apex court is likely to decide on this on
May 15.
Legal experts as well as police officers
familiar with
the investigation process are intrigued that the confessional
statements of all the police officers and men arrested so far have been
recorded only by the state CID. No statement has been put on record
under Section 164 of the criminal penal code before a judicial
magistrate. In effect, main accused DIG D.G. Vanzara's reported
admission to having killed Sohrabuddin in a fake encounter can be
denied later as can all confessions made before an investigating
officer by others involved in the encounter. "The statements recorded
by the police mean virtually nothing when it comes up before a court.
In this case one must remember the people involved are senior officers
who know the loopholes of the law and will exploit them to their
advantage," a senior police officer told Outlook.
In the absence
of any unretractable confessional statement and with no witness turning
approver as yet, strong corroborative evidence is what is required. But
that has not been easy to come by. Attempts at getting proof of the
murder of Sohrabuddin's wife Kauserbi too have drawn a blank so far.
The excavations at the well in Vanzara's farmhouse at Illol village
have not yielded any result. It was believed that after killing
Kauserbi and setting her body on fire in the ravines nearby, her
remains had been buried in the well which was later filled up and a
room constructed over it. Samples taken from the excavations at the
site and put through forensic tests have not yielded any proof of the
murder.
The two anti-terrorist squad (ATS)
constables Ajay
Parmar and Santram Sharma, and inspector N.H. Dabhi, are key
accomplices who were belatedly arrested on May 7. Parmar worked along
with superintendent Rajkumar Pandian, one of the accused officers along
with Vanzara. Santram was behind the wheel of the vehicle used by
Vanzara, Pandian and others to go to Hyderabad to trail Sohrabuddin
from where they intercepted the bus in which he and his wife Kauserbi
were travelling. Inspector Dabhi was present when the fake encounter
took place in Ahmedabad. All three have been taken to Hyderabad by the
CID team to corroborate the sequence of events. Interestingly, when
CID's Rajnish Rai was heading the investigations before he was suddenly
asked to discontinue, he had seriously considered turning the junior
cops approvers. But that's another story.
Rai had set the alarm
bells ringing in the state government and the police with his flash
arrest of three top officers—Vanzara, Pandian and M.N. Dineshkumar. He
even moved the Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate's court for conducting
narcoanalysis and brain mapping tests on the three officers. Rai
decided to directly approach the court for the tests without taking the
government lawyer into confidence. This led to his being asked to
report to Gujarat's inspector general of police Geetha Johri, who was
put in charge of the investigations. But Rai declined. Reason: during
his stint in the CBI he had investigated Johri's husband, a forest
service officer.
For all practical purposes,
the Sohrabuddin case is one of triple murder. His wife Kauserbi is also
believed to have been killed by Vanzara & Co. So was Tulsiram
Prajapati, a small-time crook and friend of Sohrabuddin. He had helped
the stf track their man to Hyderabad. Apparently, Prajapati was bumped
off because he knew too much.
While Sohrabuddin's killing has
been dismissed by many in the Gujarat police establishment as another
instance of a gangster or terrorist being bumped off, and human rights
issues being raised, what is worrying for the government is the
political fallout if the case is investigated by an agency like the CBI
over which it has no authority. It is believed that heads of senior
politicians and police officers could roll if investigations are
broadened to cover other alleged encounters in the state.
Already
the mishandling of the case by state home minister Amit Shah has made
Narendra Modi see red. Given a dressing down, Shah, one of the most
powerful ministers in the cabinet, was missing from the Gujarat Day
celebrations on May 1 at Junagadh. He also did not attend two cabinet
meetings. He was present at the third one, but he left for home
immediately after it. Perhaps he, like many others in the home
department, is worried about which way the tide will turn on May 15.
