Sohrabuddin Sheikh case: CBI court acquits all 22 accused

A special CBI court in Mumbai on Friday acquitted all the accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh-Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case of 2005. Most of the 22 accused were policemen from Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Judge S.J. Sharma expressed concern about the evidence presented by the CBI.

The Sohrabuddin Sheikh case had attracted much media attention over the years as BJP chief Amit Shah, who was then Gujarat's home minister, had been an accused in the case before being discharged in 2014.

According to the CBI, Sheikh, an alleged gangster with terrorist links, his wife Kausar Bi and his aide Prajapati were abducted by the Gujarat Police from a bus when they were on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra from Hyderabad on the night of November 22 and 23, 2005.

The CBI claimed Sheikh was killed in a fake encounter near Ahmedabad on November 26 that year, while his wife was killed three days later. Prajapati was killed in a fake encounter a year later on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border by policemen from both states.

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.

While 38 people had been named in the CBI charge-sheet, 16 were subsequently discharged for want of evidence. These included Shah, then Rajasthan home minister Gulabchand Kataria, former Gujarat police chief P.C. Pande and former senior Gujarat police officer D.G. Vanzara.