Bombay HC upholds acquittal in Sohrabuddin’s ‘fake’ encounter case

The Bombay High Court has upheld the acquittal of 22 accused, including 21 junior Gujarat and Rajasthan police officers, in the alleged 2005 fake encounter case of gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife Kausar Bi, and aide Tulsiram Prajapati.

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of the 22 accused, all but one junior cops, in the 2005 case of alleged fake encounter of Gujarat gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh, wife Kausar Bi and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati, noting the prosecution had failed to establish the case.

The HC observed it finds no ground to interfere with the trial court judgment acquitting the accused and added the prosecution case is based on circumstantial evidence and there are several broken links in the chain of circumstances.

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A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad dismissed the appeals filed by Shaikh’s brothers, Rubabuddin and Nayabuddin, challenging the December 2018 judgment of a special CBI court in Mumbai acquitting all the accused in the case.

Among the 22 accused acquitted, 21 were junior-level officers from Gujarat and Rajasthan police, who were allegedly part of the teams that abducted the three and later killed them in staged encounters.

The remaining accused was the owner of a farmhouse in Gujarat, where Shaikh and Kausar Bi were allegedly illegally detained before they were killed.

The court, in its judgment, noted the prosecution failed to establish that Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Kausar Bi were abducted by Gujarat and Rajasthan police and also failed to establish motive for staging a fake encounter.

The case of the prosecution is based on circumstantial evidence and there are several broken links in the chain of circumstances, the HC said.

In a case based on circumstantial evidence, the law requires that the situations relied upon by the prosecution must be fully established and form a complete chain of circumstances which point out only to the guilt of the accused person and rule out any other hypothesis consistent with the innocence of the accused persons, said the bench.

“A judgment of acquittal cannot be interfered in a casual or cavalier manner and it is not permissible in law to overturn the judgment only on the ground that another view is possible,” the HC said.

The High Court must take a holistic view and not a myopic view, the judgment added.

The HC said there was no ground to draw an inference that the trial was not being conducted properly because 92 prosecution witnesses turned hostile.

The special court, while acquitting the accused, had observed that the prosecution failed to establish a cogent case to suggest there had been any conspiracy to kill Shaikh and the others, and that the present accused persons had any role in it.

In April 2019, Shaikh’s brothers filed an appeal in the high court. The prosecuting agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), told the HC last year that it had accepted the acquittal judgment and was not going to appeal against it.

Shaikh was killed in November 2005 in an alleged fake gun-battle near Ahmedabad by the Gujarat police. His wife, Kausar Bi, was also killed a few days later, as per the probing agency.

A year later, in December 2006, Prajapati, considered a key eyewitness to the encounters, was killed in another alleged shootout.

The probe in the high-profile case was handed over to the CBI by the Supreme Court, and the trial was shifted to Mumbai from adjoining Gujarat.

Shaikh’s brothers, in the appeal, claimed that the trial was flawed and cited instances where witnesses later claimed that their testimonies were not accurately recorded by the special court.

The appeal sought that the judgment be quashed and a retrial be held in the case.

Shaikh, his wife and aide, 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 was taken in one vehicle and Prajapati in another.

As per the CBI, 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.