Ahmedabad, November 30: Gujarat Police today got a flak from the Supreme Court which said the state’s anti-terrorist squad (ATS) responsible for the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter killing case has been “discredited”.
“Your (Gujarat) ATS stands so discredited,” said a bench comprising justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai.
The remarks came when Gujarat government was countering CBI’s theory that Popular Builders firing case of 2004 in Navrangpura area in Ahmedabad was stage-managed to create a case against Sohrabuddin before eliminating him.
The bench noted that senior police officer D G Vanzara, who had headed ATS involved in the killing of Sohrabuddin, was the DCP (Crime) of the area when the Popular Builders firing incident had happened.
“It is too much of a coincidence,” the bench said while referring to the presence of Vanzara in the two cases the probe of which was handed over to CBI.
The observations by the bench assumes importance as recently the Gujarat High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) head R K Raghvan had concluded that the killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others in 2004 by ATS involving Vanzara was a fake encounter.
Vanzara, along with other accused barring former Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah, is in jail for staging the fake encounter in which Soharabuddin was killed on November 25, 2005.
Gujarat’s Additional Advocate General Tushar Mehta submitted the bench was reading too much vis-a-vis Vanzara and said “you (bench) find too much of confidence but my stand is that it is not coincidence”.
Gujarat government alleged CBI has “concocted” evidence in the Popular Building firing case and the agency’s main aim from the start was to “destroy” the evidence gathered by the Gujarat Police against Sohrabuddin who was a terrorist and a gangster involved in extortion racket.
“CBI had a brief ready to destroy the investigation (by Gujarat Police) in the Popular Building firing case. It is really shocking,” Mehta said.
Mehta said when the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case was handed over to CBI by the apex court on January 12, 2010, the agency was asked to probe the larger conspiracy and the motive behind the killing of the victim.
“However, CBI decided not to explore any possibility of larger conspiracy,” he said adding “CBI had clues and leads but they left them”.
Gujarat government said CBI preferred not to record the statement of Yogesh Sood, a police officer from Rajasthan who was privy to an information from Madhya Pradesh Police that Sohrabuddin allegedly had links with Pakistan’s ISI.
–PTI–