13 Guj-ATS officials chargesheeted in fake encounter case

Ahmedabad, Jul 16 (UNI) Gujarat CID team, probing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case of 2005, has chargesheeted 13 officials of Gujarat and Rajasthan ATS for their alleged involvement in the case in a metropolitan court here today.

The CID team submitted the over 700-pages long chargesheet in a sealed envelope before the metropolitan magistrate K J Upadhyay.

The 13 chargesheeted ATS officials, include three top IPS officials -- D G Vanjara, Rajkumar Pandian (both Gujarat) and Rajasthan Police SP Dinesh Kumar. The trio along with other ten lower-ranked officials have so far been arrested by the probing CID team.

At the time of filing of chargesheet, none of the accused were presented before the court.

The Gujarat CID began probing into the Sohrabuddin encounter case at the behest of Supreme Court after the victim's brother filed an application accusing the Gujarat police of staging the encounter and terming him as a Lashker-e-Toiba terrorist.

The CID team, led by its Inspector General of Police (IGP) Geetha Johri, has also submitted its Action Taken Report (ATR) to the Supreme Court on July 3, in which it stated that the probe was nearly complete.

However, in its ATR, the CID team has given a clean chit to Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah in the case.

Sohrabuddin, who was accused of conspiring to kill Mr Modi, was killed by a team of Gujarat and Rajasthan Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) officers in a joint operation in 2005. His wife Kausar Bi, who went missing after the incident, was also killed later.

The Gujarat government had admitted before the Supreme Court that Sheikh was killed in a fake encounter by police.

UNI