The CID has detained a few middle and lower level policemen who were part of the operation led by the three arrested senior IPS officers.
AHMEDABAD: With the Gujarat government facing the heat in the fake encounter case, the state CID has detained a few middle and lower level policemen who were part of the operation led by the three arrested senior IPS officers.
A case may be registered against these policemen and they are likely to be arrested once the CID is sure of their role in the crime, police sources said on Thursday.
In an apparent bid to get to the bottom of the case, the CID is interrogating certain policemen of the ranks of Inspector, Sub-inspector and Constable who were members of the team that tracked the victim Sohrabuddin Sheikh all the way from Hyderabad till the scene of the encounter near here in November 2005.
"These policemen are being interrogated as they were part of the team that conducted the entire operation. There were some intelligence inputs involved to track Sohrabuddin. The policemen knew specifically by which bus he, his wife Kausar Bi and Tulsiram Prajapati (a friend of theirs) were travelling in and also the seat numbers," the sources said.
The individual role of these policemen is being scrutinised carefully so that there are no loopholes in the investigation, they said.
The CID team probing the fake encounter episode is also reported to have videotaped the "confessions" of some of the policemen.
The CID is seeking answers to a number of questions that are important from the point of view of investigations.
The investigating team also wants to find out how exactly the Gujarat police got to know of Sohrabuddin's whereabouts--- through intelligence inputs or was he `given away' by an informer.
"Tulsiram Prajapati was let off by the police after he was picked up by the Gujarat police along with Sohrabuddin. Then why did they let him off and eliminate only Sohrabuddin in an encounter? There are more unanswered questions", the sources said.
Tulsiram was eliminated a year after Sohrabuddin's encounter by Vanzara's team but this time near Banaskantha district of Gujarat, when he was transferred as Border Range DIG.
The three arrested officials --D G Vanzara (DIG border range), Rajkumar Pandiyan (SP Gujarat intelligence bureau) and Dineshkumar M N -- have been taken to certain places in Sabarkantha district (the home town of Vanzara) and also a farm house in the state capital Gandhinagar, where Kausar Bi is suspected to have been eliminated.
CID is also probing if there was any sexual assault on Kausar and are using the help of top forensic experts in getting any evidence of that nature.
Kausar Bi is feared to have been killed by policemen though the method is not yet known, and possibly burnt near the ravines of Ilol in Sabarkantha.
Police may also consider to register a separate case in the Kausar Bi matter as the murder took place at least three days after Sohrabuddin's encounter.
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