CBI team arrives in Gujarat to take over Sohrabuddin probe
By IANSWednesday, February 3, 2010
GANDHINAGAR - A day after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a fresh First Information Report in the staged police killing of Sohrabuddin, a team of CBI sleuths arrived here Wednesday to take charge of documents related to the four-year-old case.
Amitabh Thakur, superintendent of police of the CBI special crime unit at Mumbai, will be the chief investigating officer heading the team that of over 25 officers and men. Presently functioning out of the CBI office here, the investigators have approached the Gujarat government for accommodation to house their office.
Entrusted with the investigation of the case under orders of the Supreme Court, the CBI Tuesday filed a fresh FIR so that it could take a new look into the incident.
The apex court had initially entrusted Gujarat cadre IPS officer Geetha Johri with the case, but unhappy at the tardy pace and loopholes that remained, the court handed the probe over to the CBI.
The fresh FIR was filed against 13 officers and men from the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Gujarat police and men of the Rajasthan Special Task Force (STF). The key people in the dock are Gujarat cadre IPS officers Deputy Inspector General D.G. Vanzara, Superintendent of Police R.K. Pandian and Deputy SP N.K. Amin, besides IPS officer M.N. Dinesh and Abdul Rehman of the STF.
The Supreme Court order is a sequel to a petition by Rubabuddin, brother of Sohrabuddin, alleging malafide killing of his brother and his wife by the cops in a staged shootout.
Sohrabuddin Sheikh was killed between Narol Circle and Vishala Toll point in Ahmedabad on Nov 26, 2005, in a joint operation of Gujarat and Rajasthan Police. The ATS-STF team initially termed it as an “encounter death” of jihadi conspirators out to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Sohrabuddin’s wife Kauserbi also disappeared. Investigations initiated at the behest of the apex court brought out that she too had been killed by the policemen on Nov 29, 2005. Another key witness and Sohrabuddin’s close aide Tulsiram Prajapati too was killed on Dec 28, 2006.
Meanwhile, the state government is on record admitting before the Supreme Court on March 23, 2007, that the Sohrabuddin shootout was fake.
An advance party of the CBI team has been taking charge of the huge pile of documents of the previous investigations. Deputy Superintendent of Police Manish Surti, a Gujarati, has been at work since the past one week examining the documents which are in Gujarati. These will require to be translated before the finer part of investigations begin.
