Hyderabad, February 08: The Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case has taken a new turn with the CBI having summoned deputy inspector general of intelligence of Andhra Pradesh police, N Balasubramanyam and assistant commissioner of AP Ch Srinivas Rao to their Gandhinagar office for questioning.
Highly placed sources told TOI that the CBI had intercepted a conversation between jailed Gujarat police official D G Vanzara and Balasubramanyam that took place around the time Sohrabuddin was kidnapped from the borders of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and whisked away to Ahmedabad only to be bumped off by errant cops of Gujarat.
A CBI team that had been in Andhra Pradesh for the last week has also identified a location in Singaravelu Konda in Prakasam district of coastal Andhra Pradesh where ex-Naxalite Nayeemuddin was allegedly being sheltered in a safe house by his patrons.
Nayeemuddin is the person who is believed to have lured Sohrabuddin to Hyderabad and let his whereabouts known to his patrons. His patrons in turn let this information out to errant officials of the Gujarat police.
Balasubramanyam was the district SP of Prakasam district when the kidnapping and encounter happened in November 2005. Srinivas Rao, who is now the assistant commissioner at Shamshabad airport, was the inspector of Rajendranagar police station in Cyberabad during the time.
He is being questioned because CBI has chanced upon evidence that Sohrabuddin was housed in the area by Nayeemuddin and apparently Srinivas Rao knew about this. The ex Naxalite is missing for the last two years although CBI has been looking for him for long.
Not finding him and suspecting that he is being sheltered by some elements in AP police, the CBI has now asked the AP police to track him. The director general of AP police has formed three teams to locate Nayeemuddin but even after a month has drawn a blank.
This has given rise to the speculation that he might have been already bumped off. Incidentally, both Balasubramanyam and Srinivas Rao have in the past been part of the anti-Maoist force in the state. Nayeemuddin, an ex-Naxalite was being used as an agent by elements in AP police to carry out operations that the cops could not officially execute, it is widely believed.
The AP angle to the Sohrabuddin case gathered momentum after a Supreme Court observation last month to speed up investigations on the AP angle of the encounter.
–Agencies