Amit Shah, addl DGP Johri, ex-DGPs charged

The CBI on Tuesday filed a chargesheet against former Gujarat police chief P C Pande, Additional Director General Police Geetha Johri, retired DGP O P Mathur besides former minister of state for home Amit Shah for plotting the murder of Tulsiram Prajapati in a fake encounter in 2006 and destroying evidence.

They were among the 20 against whom the CBI filed a supplementary chargesheet before the court of Judicial Magistrate (first class) D R Joshi in Danta, Banaskantha. The Gujarat police which first probed the case had given a clean chit to Shah.

The chargesheet accuses the police officers, including DSP R K Patel, and Shah of murder, criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence and offences under the Arms Act, said CBI spokesperson Dharini Mishra.

Pande, who was the state police chief when Prajapati was murdered, was allegedly aware of the "encounter" plot. Pande—who has done two stints with the CBI and was Ahmedabad police commissioner during the 2002 riots—now works with a corporate house.Johri was investigating the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case when Prajapati was killed. She was the supervising officer of the case when it was handled by the Gujarat CID (Crime), then headed by Mathur. They are suspected of having tampered with the CDs containing the phone call records of the police officers and politicians involved in the encounters.

Johri is now with the Police Housing Corporation and Mathur has been given a post-retirement job as the director general of the newly-founded Raksha Shakti University.

The Sohrabuddin case probe threw open Gujarat police's can of worms when then supervising officer Rajnish Rai arrested his colleages, IPS officers D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian, and Rajasthan IPS officer Dinesh M N. Later R K Patel arrested Vanzara, Dinesh and IPS officer Vipul Aggarwal in the Prajapati case. Vanzara, Dinesh and Pandian were already in jail in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case. The supplementary chargesheet names Pandian and five Rajasthan policemen. Many of those named are already in jail.

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