A special court in Mumbai will deliver the judgement in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case on Friday nearly 13 years after the incident.
The final arguments in the case ended on December 5 after lawyers of the 22 people accused in the case made their submissions to Special Central Bureau of Investigation Judge SJ Sharma. The current list of accused include inspectors, assistant inspectors, sub-inspectors and constables from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh who are facing allegations of conspiracy.
The initial list of accused individuals had included Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah, ministers and police officers from Gujarat and Rajasthan.
The CBI had told the special court that hostile witnesses obstructed the probe into the deaths. The agency said there were “lacuna” in the probe as the CBI took over the case five years after the crime and witness examination began 12 years later. Out of the 210 witnesses examined, 92 were declared hostile.
According to the Central Bureau of Investigation, Sheikh, an alleged gangster, his wife Kausarbi and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati were allegedly abducted by the Gujarat Police from a bus when they were on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra from Hyderabad on the intervening night of November 22 and 23, 2005.
Sheikh was killed in an alleged staged encounter on November 26, 2005 near Ahmedabad. His wife was allegedly raped and killed three days later and her body was disposed, the CBI said. A year later, Prajapati, who was the sole witness to the murders, was shot dead by Gujarat and Rajasthan Police near Chapri on Gujarat-Rajasthan border after the police claimed he was trying to escape from custody, PTI reported.
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