50th Witness turns Hostile in Sohrabuddin fake encounter case

Yet another witness in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh alleged fake encounter case has turned hostile during the trial in the special CBI court in Mumbai. This is the 50th witness in the case who has turned hostile.

So far, the CBI has produced 73 witnesses in the case. Two witnesses were produced in the court today–one was a lawyer of Tulsi Prajapati and the other was a woman who was a passenger on the bus in which, according to the CBI, Sohrabuddin, his wife Kausar Bi were travelling before they were allegedly picked up by a police team.

In the court today, the woman said that she was in the bus but was sleeping and therefore did not see anyone being pulled out of the bus. CBI lawyer BP Raju asked her if she did not hear the loud screeching of the tyres when the bus was intercepted mid-way. To this, the woman maintained that she was sleeping and did not see anything. The woman’s husband and father, who were earlier produced in the court by the CBI, too had turned hostile.

The CBI has so far produced five witnesses who were travelling in the bus which was allegedly intercepted by a police team. Besides the woman passenger, her husband and father, the bus driver and cleaner were the other witnesses. None of them, however, have stuck to the prosecution’s story.

The other witness produced in the court today was a lawyer of Tusli Prajapati. The lawyer, who practices in Udaipur, told the court that Prajapati, following his arrest, would tell him how there was a threat to his life from police.

Sohrabuddin Sheikh, an alleged gangster, and his wife Kausar Bi were allegedly abducted by the Gujarat Police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad from Hyderabad on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra in November 2005.

According to prosecution, Sohrabuddin was allegedly killed in a fake encounter near Gandhinagar. His wife, who had disappeared, was later allegedly killed.

Prajapati, said to be an eyewitness to the encounter, was allegedly killed by police at Chapri village in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district in December 2006.

Unedited feed published from IndiaToday