Tulsiram encounter: Danta court reserves order on jurisdiction row

A local court at Danta in Banaskantha district on Saturday reserved its order over the dispute of its power of jurisdiction for taking the cognizance of chargesheet filed by the CBI in connection with the Tulsiram Prajapati encounter case. The court will pronounce its verdict on September 18.

Earlier, the court of Geeta Ahir, Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC), was filled with dozens of lawyers including senior counsel S V Raju who argued on behalf of three accused named in the chargesheet including suspended IPS officer Rajkumar Pandian, retired IPS P C Pande, O P Mathur and R K Patel, Deputy Superintendent of Police who investigated the encounter case first.

The four accused had filed separate applications objecting to the Danta court taking cognizance of the chargesheet filed by CBI, on grounds that only special CBI court in Ahmedabad, where the central agency filed the FIR last year, has the jurisdiction of accepting the chargesheet. The chargesheet named 20 accused including former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah.

"All cases being investigated by the CBI has to be reported to the special CBI court no-1 in Ahmedabad which was established on a notification by the Gujarat High Court. And Banaskantha district falls in the jurisdiction of court no-1, therefore the CBI should have filed the chargesheet there instead of this court (Danta) which also amounts to violation of the Supreme Court order," Raju argued before the court.

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