Sohrabuddin encounter case: two more witnesses turn hostile

Two more prosecution witnesses in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati alleged fake encounters case today turned hostile before a special CBI court here, taking the number of such witnesses to 55.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Himmat Singh and constable Kanti Lal, both of the Rajasthan police, deposed before the special judge S J Sharma here today.

Kanti Lal, in his statement to the CBI, had said that he, with some other policemen, had taken Prajapati to an Ahmedabad court on November 27, 2006, a month before Prajapati's death in an 'encounter'.

Prajapati was lodged in the Udaipur Central Jail then.

However, in the court today, Kanti Lal maintained that he had taken Prajapati to Ahmedabad on November 26 and not 27.

Following which, CBI lawyer B P Raju declared him as hostile.

Himmat Singh, on the other hand, claimed he gave a statement to the CBI because the agency officials threatened to implicate him in a false case.

The CBI lawyer then declared him hostile too.

Singh had told the CBI that then SP Dinesh MN (who has been discharged in this case) directed on December 25, 2006 that assistant sub-inspector Narayan Singh and constables Dalpati Singh, Yudhveer Singh and Kartar Singh should escort Prajapati to Ahmedabad.

Singh had said he requested Dinesh MN not to send these four policemen away as they were part of a special anti-theft task force.

But Dinesh MN asked him to send these four men anyway, and not to make any entry in the 'Roznama' (diary) of the police station that they were going as escorts at his instructions, Singh had told the CBI.

According to the police, Prajapati escaped from the train during this trip and was later killed in an encounter. As per the CBI, Prajapati never escaped, and the encounter was fake.

The Mumbai court has examined over 80 prosecution witnesses so far, of which 55 have turned hostile.

Sohrabuddin, a suspected gangster with terror links, and his wife were killed in an alleged fake encounter by the Gujarat Police in November 2005, while Prajapati, his aide, was killed in another alleged fake encounter by the Gujarat and Rajasthan police in December 2006.

Of the 38 people charged by the CBI, 15, including senior IPS officers D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian, Dinesh MN, and BJP president Amit Shah (then the Minister of State for Home in Gujarat) were discharged by the court.