The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has completed its probe into the
2006 Tulsiram Prajapati encounter killing and is set to file its chargesheet in
the Gujarat High Court in a few days, sources said, adding the probe agency has
established that Tulsiram was the third person travelling with gangster
Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi when the couple were picked up by police and
killed a few days later in 2005.
Tulsiram, a Sohrabuddin’s aide, was killed in an encounter at Ambaji in
Banaskantha in December 2006.
“The investigations in the case are over. We are filing the chargesheet
before June 30. We have concluded that Tulsiram was the third person travelling
with Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi in the Sangli-bound bus coming from
Hyderabad. There is enough evidence to prove Tulsiram was travelling with the
couple when they were picked up by police,” a CBI officer said.
“Tulsiram was witness to the abduction of Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi. He knew
what unfolded after the couple was taken away to Ahmedabad from Sangli. He was
under threat,” the officer added.
CBI officials also indicated that the names of police officers found to be
involved in Sohrabuddin’s encounter killing are likely to figure in the
Tulsiram case chargesheet too.
Former minister of state (home) Amit Shah, who was earlier jailed in the the
Sohrabuddin case, is also under the scanner, the CBI officer said, adding that
the probe agency had obtained his call records that show he was in constant
touch with D G Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandian between December 25 and December
28, 2006, the day Tulsiram was killed. Both Vanzara and Pandian are in jail in
the Sohrabuddin case.
Shah, who was also questioned by the CBI in New Delhi in January this year
in connection with the Tulsiram case, had denied any involvement, CBI sources
said. The CBI had taken over the Tulsiram case probe in May last year on High
Court’s orders.
A day earlier, the probe agency had questioned Rajasthan’s former home minister
Gulabchand Kataria at its Gandhinagar office. Kataria is currently a BJP MLA
from Udaipur, where Tulsiram was in jail before he was brought to Gujarat and
killed.
Earlier, the CID that probed the Tulsiram case, had given a clean chit to
Shah in July 2010.
