Supreme Court Encounter Review
Supreme Court agrees to review 22 acquittals in 2005 fake encounter case.
Anonymous
India’s Supreme Court has agreed to review a challenge to the acquittal of 22 people, including 21 police officers, in the 2005 alleged fake-encounter case involving Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife Kausar Bi and associate Tulsiram Prajapati. The court issued notice to the acquitted defendants and said it would consider a small number of key witness statements rather than revisit the entire trial. Justice Joymalya Bagchi said the fact that 92 prosecution witnesses turned hostile raised questions about whether the trial was fair. The Bombay High Court had upheld the 2018 acquittals, finding the prosecution had not established its case and that the circumstantial evidence had gaps; Shaikh’s brothers are challenging that decision.
Key Points
1
The 22nd acquitted defendant was not a police officer but the owner of a Gujarat farmhouse where the prosecution alleged Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi were illegally detained.
2
The prosecution alleged that Sohrabuddin, Kausar Bi and Prajapati were travelling by bus from Hyderabad to Sangli when police took them into custody on the night of November 22–23, 2005; the three were allegedly moved in separate vehicles.
3
According to the CBI, Sohrabuddin was killed near Ahmedabad on November 26, 2005, in an encounter involving Gujarat and Rajasthan police personnel; Kausar Bi was allegedly killed three days later.
4
The acquitted police officers were described across the reports as coming from Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.
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