Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, the hearing for which is taking place in Mumbai High Court on a daily basis since February 9, 2018 was full of twists on Monday. Out of the four witnesses who were supposed to be presented on 2nd April two were present while only one of them gave statement in court – and turned hostile.

The witnesses who were presented in court, included Shilpan Singh and Nageenbhai. Shilpan Singh was to give witness related to the accused Gujarat Police Inspector NV Chauhan. NV Chauhan did not attend the hearing and the court issued an arrest warrant in his name and instructed him to appear in court today, i.e. 3rd April.

Nageenbhai Rathod, the other witness who gave his statement in court, is a school teacher from Maharashtra. As per the CBI chargesheet, Nageenbhai was a witness for a piece of paper, the statement towards which, was given by a member of the Apte family. The Apte family was travelling in the same bus, from which Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi were alighted by Gujarat IPS Officer RK Pandyaan.  Once the couple alighted from the bus, the encounter allegedly took place.

The CBI chargesheet mentions a statement given by Nageenbhai. The chargesheet says that CBI showed a photo of Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi to the Apte family in front of Nageenbhai, which they identified. Then a piece of paper, in which a few statements were written in Gujarati, was translated to Marathi and shown to the members of the Apte family.

Nageenbhai, however, in deposition before special Judge Sunil Sharma, refused to the statement mentioned in the CBI chargesheet and said that he had never seen or met any member of the Apte family. He also said that no photo was shown to anybody in his presence. He added that the CBI called him and asked him to translate a piece of paper written in Gujarati to Marathi, which he did.

On this retraction from his filed statement, CBI declared Nageenbhai Rathod a hostile witness. He now becomes the 45th witness of the 63 presented so far, to have turned hostile. A witness is declared hostile when the statement given by a witness in court do not match the statement given earlier in the charge-sheet.