Guj IPS officer Pandiyan discharged in Sohrabuddin case

Mumbai, Aug 18 (PTI) A special CBI court here todaydischarged Gujarat IPS officer Rajkumar Pandiyan in connectionwith the alleged fake encounter killing case of SohrabuddinSheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati. Special CBI judge M B Gosavi discharged Pandiyan on theground that there was no sanction (permission to prosecute)against him and hence he cannot be prosecuted. According to CBI, Pandiyan was the part of the team ofGujarat ATS that picked Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauser Bi.The agency said he also took active part in the conspiracyright from its inception stage. Pandiyan, who is now serving as liaison officer at theGujarat Industrial Development Corporation in Mumbai wasreinstated in 2014. He was earlier placed under suspension in2007 after his arrest in the encounter case. The court has so far discharged BJP president Amit Shah,Rajasthan Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria, Rajasthan-basedbusinessman Vimal Patni, former Gujarat Police chief P CPande, Additional Director General of Police Geeta Johri,Gujarat Police officer Abhay Chudasama, Gujarat Policeofficial N K Amin, Yashpal Chudasama and Ajay Patel (bothsenior office-bearers at the Ahmedabad District Co-OperativeBank) from the case. Sohrabuddin, a gangster whom Gujarat Police claimed hadlinks with Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, andhis wife Kausar Bi were allegedly abducted by Gujarat ATS fromHyderabad on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra. He was killed in an alleged fake encounter nearGandhinagar in November 2005 after which his wife disappearedand was believed to have been done to death. Tulsiram, an aide of the gangster and an eyewitness to theencounter, was killed allegedly by police at Chapri village inBanaskantha district in Gujarat in December 2006. The Sohrabuddin killing case was transferred to Mumbai inSeptember, 2012 at CBI’s request for a fair trial. In 2013,the Supreme Court had clubbed Prajapati’s encounter killingcase with that of Sohrabuddin. PTI VI DKZMN