PTI, MUMBAI: The CBI probed the alleged fake encounter killings of gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife Kausar Bi and his aide Tulsi Prajapati with a ‘pre-conceived and premeditated’ theory to implicate political leaders, a special CBI court has said.
Special CBI Judge S J Sharma made the remarks in a 350-pages judgement on December 21, while acquitting all the 22 accused in the case. The court acquitted the accused due to insufficient
evidence and expressed sorrow over the loss of “three lives.” While the judgement copy was unavailable Friday, media was given access to portions of the judgement. In his order, Judge Sharma said his predecessor (Judge M B Gosavi) while passing an order of discharge in the application of accused number 16 (BJP president Amit Shah) recorded that the investigation was “politically motivated”.
“Having given my dispassionate consideration to the entire material placed before me and having examined each of the witnesses and the evidence closely, I have no hesitation in recording that a premier investigating agency like CBI had before it a premeditated theory and a script intended to implicate political leaders,” the judgement said.
The order said the CBI, during its probe into the case, was doing something other than arriving at the truth of the offences in question. “It clearly appears that the CBI was more concerned in
establishing a particular pre-conceived and premeditated theory rather than finding out the truth,” the judgement said.
It said the CBI did what was required to reach that ‘goal’ instead of conducting a probe in accordance with law. “The entire investigation was thus targeted to act upon a script to achieve the said goal and in the process of its zeal to implicate political leaders, CBI created evidence and placed witness statements in the charge-sheet,” the judgement said.
Such statements could not withstand the judicial scrutiny of the court and the witnesses deposed fearlessly before this court clearly indicating that their statements were wrongly recorded by CBI to justify its script to implicate political leaders, the court said.
The court noted that there was negligence on part of the CBI towards material evidence which clearly indicated that the agency “hurriedly” completed the investigation. “…the CBI thus implicated police personnel who had no knowledge of any conspiracy… rather they appeared innocent,” the court said. The judge said he is not oblivious to the agony and frustration caused to the families of the deceased persons and to the society in general when a crime of such a serious nature goes unpunished.
“…but then the law does not permit the court to punish the accused on the basis of a moral conviction or on suspicion alone. The burden of truth in a criminal trial never shifts. The burden is always on the prosecution to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt,” the court said. The court noted that there is ‘regret’ that three persons were killed, which was going unpunished. It added that it has no option but to conclude that the accused are not guilty.
The order said there was no evidence to prove CBI’s theory that the three deceased were abducted by a police team. “The CBI has also failed to establish presence of the accused police personnel at the spot of the alleged incident,” the order said, adding that no witness was examined to show that the policemen were issued service weapons. Of the 22 accused, 21 were junior police officers from
Gujarat and Rajasthan, who the CBI said were part of teams which abducted and killed the three in staged encounters. The court said there was nothing to show if service weapons of the
accused policemen were used in the killings.
