The final arguments in the keenly-followed twin encounters of Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati and the gruesome rape and murder of Kausar Bi will take place before a Special CBI Court from Monday.
During the course of the ongoing trial, Additional Sessions Judge SJ Sharma fixed December 3 as the date for final hearing in the case. "Let us begin final arguments from Monday," Judge Sharma told the lawyers who are representing 22 accused facing trial in the politically-sensitive case.
Judge Sharma announced the date of final hearing after he completed the process of the recording of statements of the accused under section 313 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the lawyers representing the accused failed produce any defence witness in the case.
The alleged fake encounters of notorious gangsters Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram and disappearance of the former's wife Kausar Bi during 2005-06 had resulted in a major political fallout involving the BJP-ruled Gujarat.
The prosecution’s case was that Sohrabuddin had connections with Lashkar-e-Taiba and was conspiring to assassinate an "important political leader", presumably then chief minister and current Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Initially, there were in all 38 accused in the case. Of them, 16 has been discharged — 15 by the special CBI court and one by the Bombay High Court.
The accused discharged in the case include BJP’s current national President and the then Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah, Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chandra Kataria and high-profile Duputy Inspector General DG Vanzara, who headed the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and known for several encounters.
During the course of the trial, 210 prosecution witnesses were examined. Of the prosecution witnesses, 92 turned hostile.
A “dreaded criminal” Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi were killed in an alleged fake encounter in November 2004 by the Gujarat Police near Gandhinagar in Gujarat. Thecase assumed considerable public importance owing to the alleged involvement of some of the high-profile politicians and IPS officers in it.
An aide Tulsiram Prajapati, who was the prime witness to the killings was arrested by the police and later killed in an encounter in December 2006 after the law-enforcers claimed he tried to escape from custody.
Later, the police had named 33 persons as accused in the case. Shah, who was Gujarat home minister at the relevant time in 2005, the then home minister of Rajasthan and several Gujarat IPS officers, lower police officials from both states besides Andhra Pradesh, were among the accused.
Several police officers from Gujarat were among the 33 accused in the "fake" encounters of Sohrabuddin Shaikh, Kausar Bi in November 2005 and Prajapati in December 2006.
The alleged Sohrabuddin fake encounter case was transferred to Mumbai in September 2012 at CBI's request for fair trial. In 2013, the Supreme Court had clubbed Tulsiram Prajapati's encounter killing case with that of Sohrabuddin.
In December, 2014, Special CBI Judge M. B. Gosavi in Mumbai discharged Shah and 16 other co-accused, citing either lack of sanction for prosecution or insufficient evidence against them.