Acquittal of 22 in Sohrabuddin case CBI judge's last verdict
Mumbai, Dec 22 : For special CBI Judge S J Sharma, acquitting all 22 accused in the alleged fake encounter killings of gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife Kausar Bi and his aide Tulsi Prajapati on Friday, was the last judgement of his career.
"This is my last judgement...," said the judge, who is set to retire later this month, in his ruling. "It is unfortunate that a family (of victims) has lost a son, brother...But the evidences were not enough to show that these accused were authors of the crime."
The judge said he felt sorry for the families of Shaikh and Prajapati as "three lives were lost". But the system demands that the court go solely by evidence, he added.
All the accused, who were mostly police officials from Gujarat and Rajasthan, were out on bail during the years-long trial.
The 13-year-old case saw several twists and turns, including 92 prosecution witnesses turning hostile. At one point, BJP president Amit Shah was also arrested briefly in 2010.
The three victims who were returning to Sangli in Maharashtra from Hyderabad in a bus were taken into custody by a police team on the night of November 22-23, 2005. The couple were taken in one vehicle and Prajapati in another.
The CBI, which was the prosecuting agency, said Shaikh was killed on November 26, 2005, allegedly by a joint team comprising Gujarat and Rajasthan police, and Kausar Bi three days later.
Prajapati, who was lodged in an Udaipur central jail, was killed in an encounter on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border on December 27, 2006.
Of the 22 accused, 21 are junior-level police officials from Gujarat and Rajasthan, who the CBI said were part of the teams that abducted the three and later killed them in staged encounters.
The remaining accused was the owner of the farm house in Gujarat where Shaikh and Kausar Bi were illegally detained before they were killed.
"The prosecution has failed to put forth any documentary or substantive evidence to suggest or establish the conspiracy theory against the 22 accused. It has failed to establish all charges levelled against them. Hence all the accused stand acquitted," the judge said in his judgement.
The court cannot rely solely on "circumstantial and hearsay evidence", he added.
Police said Sohrabuddin was linked with terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and was allegedly conspiring to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat.
The case was initially probed by the Gujarat CID before the CBI took over in 2010. The Supreme Court in 2013 directed that the trial be shifted to Mumbai from Gujarat on the central agency's request to ensure a fair trial.
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Odisha: BJD suspends 6 MLAs for cross-voting in RS polls
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Bhubaneswar (PTI): The Biju Janata Dal on Saturday suspended six of its MLAs for cross-voting during the recent election to four Rajya Sabha seats from Odisha.
The suspended legislators were Chakramani Kanhar of Baliguda seat, Naba Kishor Mallick of Jayadev constituency, Souvic Biswal of Choudwar-Cuttack, Subasini Jena of Basta, Ramakanta Bhoi of Tirtol and Devi Ranjan Tripathy of Banki, an order by party chief Naveen Patnaik showed.
The suspension decision was taken at the opposition party's Political Affairs Committee (PAC) meeting presided over by Patnaik.
The six MLAs were issued a show-cause notice on March 17.
They submitted their replies on Friday evening, and those were found not satisfactory, said the BJD's chief whip in the Assembly, Pramila Mallik.
The ruling BJP won two of the four Rajya Sabha seats while the opposition BJD and a saffron party-backed Independent candidate bagged one seat each in the biennial polls held last Monday.
While the total number of BJP legislators and Independent MLAs supporting the ruling party was 82 in the 147-member House, the saffron party candidates secured 93 first preference votes, which was 11 more than its strength in the Assembly.
Of these 11 votes, eight were of BJD MLAs and three of Congress legislators, an official had said.
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