Prajapati encounter: ‘Raiger should be held responsible’

The lawyer of retired Director General of Police O P Mathur, who is a co-accused in the Tulsiram Prajapati encounter case, told a special CBI court on Wednesday that G C Raiger, who is also a former DGP, should be held responsible for the killing.

On the fifth day of argument on the issue of not taking prior approval from the state government before naming government officials in the case, Mathur's lawyer V D Gajjar said Raiger knew that inspector V L Solanki's letter seeking approval to interrogate Prajapati was lying with Additional DGP Geetha Johri. However, as the head of CID (crime), he didn't react to the denial of permission to Solanki, Gajjar alleged.

"If the story of Raiger is to be believed, he was aware of the so-called development in the Prajapati case yet he didn't inform anyone. If he got illegal instruction from (the then state home minister) Amit Shah, why didn't he react at that time itself? The question is why didn't he inform the governor or the chief secretary at that time?" Gajjar said.

He told the court that Raiger should be considered responsible for the murder of Prajapati and the court should take cognizance of this fact.

A day earlier, Gajjar had attacked DIG Rajnish Rai, a witness in the case, claiming it was Rai who lost the CD containing details of the killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauserbi. Rai had first investigated the case.

Meanwhile, Shah's lawyer Nirupam Nanavati argued that his client had nothing to do with the encounter of Prajapati. He said CBI's claims that there was a meeting between Shah and senior police officers, including ATS chief and Border Range DIG, to eliminate Prajapati, were baseless.

"Assuming that there was a meeting and there are call records of Shah and other senior officials, it doesn't amount to conspiring a murder. These call records are part of Shah's officials duty which he was performing," Nanavati said.

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