Court reserves order on bail plea of Sohrabuddin case accused

A Special CBI Court here today reserved order till tomorrow on a bail petition filed by retired Gujarat police officer Mukesh Parmar, an accused in the fake encounter of suspected gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh and subsequent killing of his wife Kausarbi.
Parmar, a retired Deputy Superintendent of Police, is incarcerated since 2007 and currently lodged in Taloja Jail in adjoining Navi Mumbai.
He has sought interim bail for three days, from December 15, as he had to visit Gandhinagar to mark his physical presence to collect post-retirement benefits.
Parmar needed bail for only three days and would abide by all the conditions imposed by the court, his lawyers Amit Nair and Pawan Gupta pleaded.

CBI, however, opposed his plea, saying Parmar's presence at the state headquarters to collect post-retirement benefits was not necessary.
Instead, the former DySP could execute power of attorney in favour of someone who can appear on his behalf, said the Central agency which probed the 2005 case of Gujarat.

According to defence lawyers, Parmar was not even part of the encounter team, which gunned down Shaikh near Ahmedabad in November 2005 in what CBI claimed was a staged killing. His wife was also killed a few days later.
He had no role in the conspiracy as well, they said.
On September 27 last year, the Supreme Court ordered the transfer of the case to Maharashtra after CBI submitted that witnesses were being intimidated and a free and fair trial was not possible in Gujarat.

Over a dozen policemen, some of them from IPS, have been named accused in the high-profile case.