Sohrabuddin case: Special court seeks two years to finish trial

NEW DELHI: A special CBI court in Mumbai, which is hearing the fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kausarbi and Tulsiram Prajapati, on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it will take two years to complete the trial as around 650 witnesses have to be examined and various applications need to be disposed of before initiating the trial.
A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Pinaki Chandra Ghose asked the trial court to hold the proceedings as expeditiously as possible and said that it would consider progress in the case in July when it would also set a timeframe for completion of trial.
Referring to reports filed by the trial judge and the registrar general of Bombay high court, the bench said that translation of all documents from Marathi and Gujarati to English had been completed and the judge had sought three months to dispose of applications filed by the accused, including plea for discharge in the case.
The court granted time till March to the trial judge to dispose of the applications and to proceed with the trial thereafter.
"We direct the trial judge to dispose of all the applications by March-end and thereafter pass order on framing of charges to proceed expeditiously with the trial. Post the case on July 7 when we will monitor the progress and fix time schedule for completion of the trial,” the bench said.
One of the accused IPS officers in the case, Sanghian Pandian Rajkumar, pleaded before the court that he should be allowed to leave Mumbai. He urged that the condition imposed by the court not to leave the city while granting bail be relaxed.
The apex court had transferred trial of the encounter cases from Ahmedabad to Mumbai in 2012. The trial judge in the case recently gave a clean chit to BJP president Amit Shah, saying there was no sufficient evidence to proceed against him and the CBI had booked him in the case for political reasons.
According to CBI, Sohrabuddin and his wife were abducted by Gujarat Police's Anti-Terrorism Squad in November 2005 and killed in a fake encounter near Gandhinagar.
Tulsiram, an eyewitness to the fake encounter, was also killed by the police in another fake encounter at Chapri village in Banaskantha district of Gujarat in December 2006, the CBI said.
The SC had handed over investigation in these cases to the CBI on April 8, 2011.