CBI gets new man to probe Gujarat’s 3 encounter cases

Geer, a star CBI officer, was awarded the President’s medal for meritorious service this Independence Day.

Geer, head of Mumbai’s Special Crime Branch, has probed a number of high-profile graft cases, including Naval war room leak case of Ravi Shankaran, arms dealer Abhishek Verma, Rs 750-crore Tatra truck scam and other terror-related cases.

CBI Chief Information Officer Kanchan Prasad said, “SP Tamgadge’s work is over, but if we require his assistance, he will be contacted.”

The Sohrabuddin encounter case was transferred to Mumbai in 2012 and the Tulsiram encounter case was transferred to Mumbai earlier this year. The Ishrat case, in which the CBI submitted its chargesheet last year, is yet to be committed to court.

Sources in CBI said Tamgadge has expressed his wish to withdraw from investigations due to the “pressure” during the Ishrat probe. However, he had finished the probe and chargesheeted Intelligence Bureau special director Rajinder Kumar, who had retired by then, and the then statutory IB officers of his team in Gujarat.

Tamgadge, a Nagaland cadre officer, was shifted to ACB Mumbai to be close to Gujarat during the encounter probe. However, he was shifted to ACB Nagpur when the charge-sheet in the Tulsiram Prajapati case was to be filed. While working on this case, Tamgadge had faced opposition from his seniors when he chargesheeted BJP president Amit Shah (the then state Home Minister), top IPS officer Geetha Johri, retired DGPs P C Pande and O P Mathur, encounter police officers D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian and Dinesh M N, among others.