New Delhi: Gujarat Police on Tuesday got a flak
from the Supreme Court which said the state's anti-terrorist
squad (ATS) responsible for the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake
encounter killing case has been "discredited".
"Your (Gujarat) ATS stands so discredited," said a bench
comprising justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai.
The remarks came when Gujarat government was countering
CBI's theory that Popular Builders firing case of 2004 in
Navrangpura area in Ahmedabad was stage-managed to create a
case against Sohrabuddin before eliminating him.
The bench noted that senior police officer DG Vanzara,
who had headed ATS involved in the killing of Sohrabuddin, was
the DCP (Crime) of the area when the Popular Builders firing
incident had happened.
"It is too much of a coincidence," the bench said while
referring to the presence of Vanzara in the two cases the
probe of which was handed over to CBI.
The observations by the bench assumes importance as
recently the Gujarat High Court-appointed Special
Investigation Team (SIT) had concluded that the killing of
Ishrat Jahan and three others in 2004 by ATS involving Vanzara
was a fake encounter.
Vanzara, along with other accused barring former Gujarat
Home Minister Amit Shah, is in jail for staging the fake
encounter in which Soharabuddin was killed on November 25,
2005.
Gujarat's Additional Advocate General Tushar Mehta
submitted the bench was reading too much vis-a-vis Vanzara and
said "you (bench) find too much of confidence but my stand is
that it is not coincidence".
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 22:42