The CBI may approach the Supreme Court for directions to the Gujarat government after it declined to give details of the killing of a man believed to be an eyewitness in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh fake encounter.
The CBI is mulling this move after it had approached the Gujarat government for details of the police encounter involving Tulsi Prajapati, an undertrial who was lodged at Udaipur jail.
The premier investigating agency has been directed by the Supreme Court to investigate into the fake encounter in which Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi were killed in 2005.
According to the state police, Prajapati was killed when he tried to escape from custody while being shifted back to Gujarat from Rajasthan after attending a court trial.
When contacted, CBI spokesperson Harsh Bahal said, "The Supreme Court had directed the CBI to also look into the larger conspiracy behind the Sohrabuddin case. In this connection, the case record of the Prajapati death was called for from the government and Director General of Police Gujarat, which is yet to come."
While he refused to divulge further, sources in the investigating agency said if the state government continued to decline the information, the agency may approach the apex court again seeking directions for handing over the details of the Prajapati case to it.
The state government had declined the information to the CBI on the grounds that the agency was directed to investigate only Sohrabuddin's killing.
Prajapati's killing had raised many eyebrows as he was perceived to be a sole witness to the killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife. They both were labelled as gangsters.
According to the investigations, Prajapati had written a letter from Rajasthan jail to his brother in which he had claimed he was the lone witness to the "cold-blooded murder" of Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi and that the Gujarat police was scheming to kill him.
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