Sohrabbudin killing: Cop says CBI wants her to implicate Shah

NEW DELHI - Gujarat police official Geetha Johri has moved the Supreme Court alleging that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was mounting pressure on her to point an accusing finger towards some politicians, including former minister Amit Shah, in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh killing.

Additional Inspector General of Police Johri said in her petition filed Thursday that the CBI was forcing her to name as accused some politicians, including former Gujarat minister of state for home Amit Shah, who is currently in judicial custody.

She said that the CBI threatened her with “wild charges, in order to pressurize” her to implicate Shah.

Johri said that the CBI has used coercion and threats to extract a statement from her personal assistant Raju Acharya against her.

She said CBI Additional Director Balwinder Singh, supervising the investigation, too should be questioned in the Sohrabuddin’s and his wife Kausarbi’s abduction and shootout killing.

“Balwinder Singh should be one of the witnesses to be questioned, but he is the person who is deciding who is to be questioned in regard to the abduction of Sohrabuddin,” she said.

Johri has made these allegations in a curative petition before the apex court seeking the expunging of adverse observations against her by the court in its Jan 12 judgment.

She said that in the bench, which transferred the investigation to CBI, there was a judge who was himself being investigated by the CBI for offences related to the Ghaziabad district court provident fund scam.

“How far it was proper for a judge under CBI investigation himself to order CBI investigation in another case - particularly when the other case is a politically sensitive case - touches upon the issue of judicial propriety,” said Johri.

She said: “…being a dignified police Officer, the petitioner would not like to say anything more than bringing this fact to the knowledge of the court.”

Johri said in her petition: “…clearly there seems to be a political angle to the case and to the petitioner. This is evident from the manner in which first the amicus

curiae Gopal Subramanium and then Harin Raval, who was assisting him, had been impressing upon the court to hand over the investigation to the CBI.”

She said that the third person who was taken off the bus along with Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi at Ahmedabad, three days before his killing Nov 26, 2005, was not Tulsi Prajapati but Kalimuddin alias Nayeemuddin, a former People’s War Group member who turned Andhra Pradesh police approver.

Balwinder Singh was the police commissioner of Andhra Pradesh’s capital Hyderabad at that time.

The petition said that Johri investigated the case “diligently and honestly”. She said that she was even praised for her honest inquiry which led to the arrest of high police officials who are still in jail.

Johri contended that after conducting the preliminary inquiry she should, as a matter of practice, have been withdrawn but the investigation was thrust upon her and today she is suffering.

She said that at no stage, when investigation were being carried under her stewardship, there was any attempt to derail it.

She said that she has been slammed by the apex court even though there was no material against her and that too without affording her an opportunity to present her side.

Johri said that the CBI was using these observation of the court to threaten her with arrest in case she tried to defy the investigating agency.

The apex court in the said judgment Jan 12 transferred the investigations into the Sohrabuddin-Kausarbi abduction and shootout killing case to the CBI.