Gujarat’s former Director General of Police PC Pande was on Wednesday discharged by a CBI court in the fake encounter killing case of Tulsiram Prajapati, an aide of slain gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, on technical grounds. Special CBI court judge M B Gosavi, who is presiding over the trial of the twin fake encounter cases, discharged Pande for want of mandatory sanction from the Gujarat government for his prosecution. “For want of sanction, the charges against the accused P C Pande are dropped," Judge Gosavi said.
Though he was not charge-sheeted in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake murder case, his role had come under scanner of the CBI over allegations that he had tried to derail the investigations by misleading the CBI that both Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Prajapathi cases were not internet-linked. With his discharge in the Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case, the CBI is unlikely to nail him in the Soharbuddin Shaikh fake encounter case.
"We argued that Pande was only discharging his official duty and to prosecute him mandatory sanction from the government must be obtained," Pande's advocate Sachin Pawar said. Pande’s discharge in the Tulsiram Prajapati fake killing case comes on the heels of the discharge of BJP’s national President Amit Shah by the CBI court on the ground that no case existed against the latter. While discharging Shah from the twin fake encounter cases, the same CBI court had on December 30 held that Shah had been held for “political reasons”.
An eyewitness to the alleged killing of Sohrabuddin Shaikh in a staged encounter in 2005, Pande had been charged with involvement in the conspiracy to eliminate Prajapati. Sohrabuddin, an underworld criminal having alleged links with Pakistan-based terror outfit lashkar-e-Taiba, his wife Kauser Bi and Tulsiram Prajapati were travelling in a bus from Hyderabad to Sangli in November 2005 when they were allegedly abducted by the Gujarat police. Sohrabuddin and his wife were allegedly killed in a staged encounter near Gandhinagar a few days later.
Prajapati, an eye-witness to the encounter, was killed by the police at Chapri village in Banaskantha district of Gujarat in December 2006. The Soharbuddin and Prajapati encounter cases were transferred to Mumbai following a Supreme court order. In 2013, the Supreme Court clubbed Tulsiram Prajapati's encounter killing case with that of Sohrabuddin. Both the Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Prajapati encounter cases are being heard simultaneously in the Mumbai CBI Court.