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IPS officer Rajnish Rai exposes PC Pandey's shadowy role

Rai levelled allegations against Pandey, then CID chief OP Mathur and GL Singhal (now SP of Kheda) by filing a 50-page rejoinder affidavit before a bench of the CAT.

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In a startling revelation, senior IPS officer Rajnish Rai on Thursday filed an affidavit exposing the shadowy role of PC Pandey, former DGP, in undermining the investigation in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.

Rai levelled allegations against Pandey, then CID chief OP Mathur and GL Singhal (now SP of Kheda) by filing a 50-page rejoinder affidavit before a bench of the CAT. The bench will make further hearing in the case next month. Rai's counsel Mukul Sinha said, "Looking at the affidavit, it clearly shows Pandey's culpability in the conspiracy to kill Tulsiram Prajapati, destruction of evidence, and in causing wilful obstruction in the investigation of the case by abusing his office."

Prajapati was a close aide of Sohrabuddin and he was, according to Rai, third person with Sohurabuddin and his wife Kausarbi to be abducted by Gujarat police on their way from Hyderabad. Rai was investigating the Sohrabuddin case and arrested three IPS officers DG Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiyan and Dinesh Kumar in April 2007.

Says Rai's affidavit: "Pandey played an acquiescent role to the criminal conspiracy of Amit Shah, then MoS (Home) and others who tampered with official records pertaining to Sohrabuddin case to hide their role in obstructing the much needed visit of police inspector VL Solanki to Udaipur for recording the statement of Tulsiram Prajapati."

"Most importantly, this delay was used by the concerned accused police officers to kill Prajapati in another fake encounter on December 28, 2006. That Pandey did not take any steps to prevent the tampering of records though Amit Shah had directed the supervisory officer to do so in his presence indicates his complicity in the conspiracy to murder Prajapati with the motive of not bringing on record the testimony of a key witness."

Giving support to his claim, Rai relied upon disclosure made by VL Solanki, and RV Acharya, personal assistant to then CID-Crime IG, Geetha Johri. He also said, "Pandey hid truth from the Supreme Court by deleting the facts from the draft ATRs which were uncomfortable for him or for the State."

Rai alleged that Mathur had instructed him not to write about the matters relating to investigation on the file of Sohrabuddin case and not mention about the one-to-one meetings official documents. Mathur instructed him not to record investigation details on the file relating to Prajapati case.

The IPS officer said, "The fact of the matter is that PC Pandey and OP Mathur wanted to de-link the Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram Prajapati case as the gravity of the offence would have increased enormously if it could be established that the accused police officers hid the heinous crime committed by them and even eliminated a witness."

Rai, who is studying a management course at IIMA, had earlier filed a petition before the CAT challenging the government act by downgrading his Annual Confidential Report (ACR) of year 2007. The government downgraded his career report card on the ground that Rai did not keep his senior officers in CID-Crime in loop while  investigating the Sohrabuddin case. Recently, government had filed a report before the CAT, saying that they had downgraded the ACR because Rai did not inform his senior officers while arresting IPS officers DG Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiyan and Dinesh Kumar.

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