Rais Khan arrested in Pandarwada case

The Panchmahals police on Tuesday took into custody the four people who are accused in the controversial Pandarwada case, and produced them in court for their remand.

One of the four accused is Rais Khan, a former aide of Teesta Setalvad, the secretary of the NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace. The local court in Panchmahals where they were produced remanded them in police custody for two days.

The case concerns the exhuming of bodies from a place near the Pandarwada village of Lunavada in 2005. The four accused — Rais Khan, Habib Sayeed, Sikandar Shaikh and Katub Diwan — are alleged to have carried out the exhumation.

The police reopened investigations in the case after the Gujarat high court last week lifted the stay on further investigation that it had imposed four years back.

The four people who were taken on remand on Tuesday were actually arrested in 2006 but they had to be released as the high court ordered a stay on further investigations before they could be produced in court.

The four accused had been arrested for destroying evidence.
Investigating officer and deputy superintendent of police, Lunavada, PC Joshi told DNA that the four accused had been taken on remand because the police want to know who the main conspirator behind the incident is.

The police also want to find out who had motivated these people to carry out the exhumation, Joshi said.

The four accused, as also the relatives of the riot victims buried discreetly in Pandarwada, had been identified by the authorities of Lunawada municipality.