HC asks CBI to file Prajapati case chargesheet in special court in city

The Gujarat High Court (HC) on Tuesday held that the special CBI court in Ahmedabad holds jurisdiction over the recent CBI chargesheet in connection with Tulsiram Prajapati encounter case and not the Danta magisterial court. With this, the HC also directed the probing agency to take back the chargesheet submitted before the Danta magisterial court and submit it before the special CBI court in Ahmedabad.

Under the directions of the Supreme Court, CBI has been investigating into the 2006 Tulsiram Prajapati encounter case after registering a fresh FIR which was sent to the special CBI court in Ahmedabad. However, on September 4, the agency had submitted its chargesheet before the magisterial court in Danta against 20 people that included former minister of state for home Amit Shah and former Gujarat DGP P C Pande.

Five of the accused had objected to CBI filing the chargesheet before Danta court. However, the objections were overruled by the magisterial court presided over by Gita Ahir, which held that it did have jurisdiction over the issue.

Following this, the five accused officers — P C Pande, O P Mathur, Geetha Johri, Rajkumar Pandian and R K Patel — moved the HC challenging the magisterial court's order. And the said order of the Danta magisterial court was quashed and set aside by Justice R H Shukla of the HC while criticising CBI for deviating from the judicial tradition.

Justice Shukla observed, "High Court and state of Gujarat have formed two special CBI courts by issuing notification on January 11, 2002 and since then a series of cases which have been investigated by the agency are filed in these two courts."

"In this particular case (Tulsi Prajapati), CBI has conveniently preferred to file chargesheet in Danta court, whereas the agency has registered the FIR in the same special CBI court here," the court further observed.

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