Apex court stands by critical remarks against Johri

NEW DELHI - The Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed Gujarat’s Inspector General of Police Geetha Johri’s plea to expunge its critical remarks against her for alleged lapses during the probe into the killings of Ujjain youth Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife and family friend by the state police in a staged gun battle in November 2005.

A bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Cyriac Joseph dismissed Johri’s plea saying the remarks made by the court against Johri’s lapses were “fair enough” and need no deletion.

A bench of erstwhile Justice Tarun Chatterjee and Justice Alam had made the remarks against Johri Jan 12 this year while ordering the CBI to probe afresh the killings of Sheikh, his wife Kausar Bi and family friend Tulsram Prajapati.

The Gujarat government had originally asked Johri to probe the November 2005 killings by a state police team, originally on the basis of a letter written by Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin Sheikh to the apex court registry.

The apex court sent the letter to the Gujarat government for action.

Though the state government later replaced Johri with Deputy Inspector General of Police Rajnish Rai, the apex court subsequently restored her as the head of the probe team.

Amid Rubabuddin’s consistent plea to hand over the probe to the CBI, the apex court let the Gujarat Police team led by Johri continue the probe and allowed it to file the chargesheet in the case.

But eventually, after noticing several lapses in the probe, the apex court handed the same to the CBI Jan 12.

The Supreme Court, to begin with, indicted Johri for virtually ignoring the probe into the killing of Tulsiram Prajapati.

“No justification can be found for the investigating officer Johri walking out of the investigation with respect to Tulsiram Prajapati’s death without even informing this court,” the apex court had remarked.

The court also censured Johri for “not carrying out the probe in right manner and obfuscating the same.

“We have observed that from the record, it was found that V.L. Solanki, an investigating officer, was proceeding in the right direction, but Johri had not been carrying out the investigation in the right manner,” said the court.

It added: “We are of the view that her mentioning the criminal background of Sohrabbuddin (in the probe report) and the discussion among the accused officers concerning Sohrabbuddin were meant to obfuscate the enquiry.”

Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife and their friend were allegedly killed by the Gujarat Police in November 2005 after their abduction by the police.

Soon after the abduction, Deputy Inspector General of Police D.G Vanjara announced Sheikh’s killing in a police shootout, dubbing him a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist, on a mission to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.

During the probe into the staged killings, the police booked several of its officers, including Vanzara and an Indian Service Police officer from the Rajasthan Police and arrested them for their role in the killings.