The special CBI court in Mumbai on Tuesday discharged former Gujarat ATS chief DG Vanzara, and Rajasthan cadre IPS officer Dinesh MN in the alleged fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati, holding there was no prima facie evidence to link them to the killings. It called the evidence put forth by prosecution witnesses "hearsay" in nature, while acquitting the two in the case in which the now BJP president Amit Shah was acquitted in 2014.
"There is no prima-facie evidence against Vanzara to connect him to the abduction and killing of Sorabuddin, his wife Kausar Bi and Tulsi Prajapati, let alone to show him as one of the main conspirators," the court said.
"The CBI mostly relied on the statements of witnesses which are hearsay in nature. Even the statements of the co-accused do not in any way directly implicate the applicant (Vanzara)," said judge Sunilkumar J Sharma.
The court said the prosecution did not say anything about his presence at the crime spots, and a mere conversation between Vanzara on one side and Gujarat IPS officer Vipul Agarwal and inspector Ashish Pandya on the other was not sufficient to establish the former IPS officer's role in the killing of Prajapati, it said.
"There is absolutely no iota of material as when, where and who killed Bi. There is also no material collected from the spot like sand, ash etc to say that her body was burnt," the court said, referring to CBI's claim that her body was burnt after killing. "It is seen from the entire record...that there is no sufficient evidence to indicate that there was a meeting of minds between accused (Vanzara) and the other accused to abduct and kill (Sheikh, Bi and Prajapati)," the court held.