Vanzara admits to ‘premptive’ murder by Gujarat Police

A day after a CBI court acquitted all the 22 accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, one of the accused police officers DG Vanzara publicly seemed to admit that Gujarat Police did indeed kill Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bi and an accomplice Tulsiram Prajapati in cold blood.

Vanzara’s use of the phrase ‘Preemptive Encounter’ embarrassed the judiciary and outraged many. What does ‘premptive encounter mean’ asked social scientist Nandini Sundar while editor and journalist Malini Parthasarathi exclaimed that this was an astonishing public admission by Vanzara that the trio had actually been murdered by Gujarat Police without following due process.

Even the CBI court had concluded that the trio had been murdered. But it claimed to be helpless in the face of inadequate evidence produced by the CBI against the accused.

Vanzara, who was arrested and spent two years in jail, had written a threatening letter from prison, claiming that the encounters had been carried out at the behest of political masters. He had held out the veiled threat of exposing the masters if they failed to stand by the police officers.

Soon after the Modi Government came to power, the first to get acquitted was the BJP President Amit Shah, the acquittal coming a month after the judge hearing the case, B.H. Loya, died under controversial circumstances in Nagpur. All the other accused were acquitted on December 20, 2018. 92 of the 210 witnesses, including three key witnesses, had turned hostile.

“Terrorists successfully assassinated. Political Leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Beant Singh, Benazir Bhutto and Premdasa. Had Post-Godhara preemptive encounters not carried out by Gujarat Police, @narendramodi would have met the same fate. We saved the Saviour. #SohrabuddinCase,” controversial retired IPS officer wrote on Twitter on Friday.

He asserted that had it not been for the "genuine encounters" by the Gujarat police, Pakistan might have been successful in its design to assassinate the then chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi and turn the state into another Kashmir.

In a statement after the special CBI's court's judgement in the Sohrabuddin-Tulsiram Prajapti encounter case in Mumbai on Friday, Vanzara, who was earlier an accused in the case, said the police personnel of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh were made scapegoats in the "political war" between the then BJP government in the state and the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre.

He claimed that the Gujarat police had accurate information about the movement of Pakistan-sponsored terrorists and acted swiftly to "ensure the safety of the country and protect the life of the then chief minister who was under constant threat."

Several Twitter users have demanded that the Human Rights Commission must take cognisance, others felt that the Supreme Court should on its own take cognizance of Vanzara’s statement.

Meanwhile, Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel hailed the CBI court's judgment and accused the former UPA government of trying to tarnish the Modi dispensation in Gujarat in the name of "fake encounter."

Patel also promised to consider restoration of the genuine promotions and other benefits due to the accused police officers in the last 13 years because of the pending case, now that they had been acquitted of all the charges.

(With IANS inputs)