Ahmedabad, May 04: A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team has arrived here for a fresh probe into the 2006 police encounter of Tulsi Prajapati, an eyewitness in the infamous 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case. The probe agency is likely to arrest former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah soon.
The CBI wants to interrogate Shah and other police officers accused in the Sohrabuddin case to extract more facts related to the case, including the role of the Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan police and politicians. Shah, who was first arrested in July last in the Sohrabuddin case, has been out on bail since November last on condition that he would not enter Gujarat till next order.
The CBI has been given a free hand and six months’ time by the Supreme Court to investigate the controversial encounter of Tulsi, an accomplice of Sohrabuddin in the latter’s illegal activities, on December 28, 2006, near Chhapri village in Banaskantha district.
Sources in the CBI said the agency would focus on the suspected involvement and complicity of Shah as well as the then Rajasthan home minister Gulabchand Kataria and their financial dealings. The Supreme Court on April 8 dealt a blow to the Gujarat government by transferring the investigation of Tulsi encounter case from the Gujarat CID to the CBI following an appeal filed by his mother, Narmada Bai, who had alleged that her son was killed in a fake encounter by the Gujarat police as he was an eyewitness to the November 2005 abduction of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauser Bi.
The CBI has lodged an FIR in Tulsi case, which was recently handed over to the central agency by the apex court as it was not satisfied by the probe conducted by the Gujarat police.
“Shah is facing a case of triple murder as the CBI has always held that the Tulsi encounter is linked with the killing of Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi and is part of a larger conspiracy involving senior police officials and politicians of Gujarat and Rajasthan,” CBI official Vinay Kumar told Khaleej Times. Kumar added that the same CBI officials who conducted the probe into Sohrabuddin case were investigating the Tulsi case.
This is the second fake encounter case in Gujarat which the Supreme Court has assigned the CBI to investigate. Earlier, the court had ordered a CBI probe into the Sohrabuddin case in which the agency had arrested Shah, a close friend of Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Last May, nearly four years after Tulsi’s death, the Gujarat CID had admitted that he was killed by the police in a fake encounter. And now the next days may see the CBI arresting many bigwigs, including Shah, on whose sanction Tulsi and Sohrabuddin allegedly carried on their extortion racket.
-Agencies