DG Vanzara, former deputy inspector general of Gujarat, on Friday said that a court’s verdict on the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case vindicated his stand that the encounters were genuine. Vanzara was one of the accused in the case who was discharged by a court in August 2017.
A special Central Bureau of Investigation court in Mumbai on Friday acquitted all 22 accused in the encounter case due to lack of evidence. Sheikh, a wanted criminal, was killed in an alleged encounter in November 2005. His wife was allegedly raped and killed three days later and his aide, Tulsiram Prajapati, was shot dead by police a year later in December 2006.
“If Sohrabuddin was not killed then by the Gujarat ATS [Anti-Terrorism Squad], then he would have killed then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi,” Vanzara claimed, according to Hindustan Times. “Due to political reasons I was jailed for nine years. But truth has come out today.”
Vanzara tweeted on Friday that the Gujarat police were “wrongly framed” for performing their duties. “We became victims of political cross firing between the then occupants of Delhi [and] Gandhinagar.” The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power at the Centre while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat at the time of the incident.
In a second tweet, Vanzara said terrorists had successfully assassinated former Prime Ministers Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, former Pakistan Prime Minister Banzair Bhutto and former Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa. “Had post-Godhara pre-emptive encounters not carried out by Gujarat Police, Narendra Modi would hv [have] met d [the] same fate. We saved d [the] saviour.”
Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah, who was Gujarat’s home minister at the time, former Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria and senior Indian Police Service officers were accused in the case and later discharged by the special court.
Of the 38 people accused in the case, only 22 had stood trial. Out of the 210 witnesses examined, 92 were declared hostile.
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