Gujarat connection haunts AP police

HYDERABAD: The SIT report in the Ishrat Jahan case that has indicted Gujarat police officials for a fake encounter has brought the focus on officials of the Andhra Pradesh police once again.
Though the case – in which a Mumbai college girl was killed in 2004 – by the Gujarat police has nothing to do with Andhra Pradesh, what is raising hackles is the involvement of local cops with police from Modi land in many cases.
“In many cases, Gujarat police has used the help of AP police and what is worrisome is that this cooperation was without the knowledge of the political bosses,” a top police official from AP confessed. “What this boils down to is that AP police has helped Gujarat police to further the agenda of the Modi government although the government in AP is ideologically opposed to that in the saffron state,” he added.
Though the help provided by the AP police in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case is well known, what is causing worry is the apprehension that the elimination was linked with the murder of Gujarat’s former home minister Haren Pandya. The former minister, a Modi baiter was killed in January 2003. Asghar Ali was arrested from Hyderabad for pulling the trigger, but a few weeks ago he was released on the orders of the Gujarat High Court which dismissed his conviction.
Sohrabuddin Sheikh was kidnapped from Andhra-Karnataka border by the Gujarat police with the active help of officials of AP police in November 2005. He was then taken to Gujarat along with his wife Kauser Bi and both of them were bumped off. It is now being suspected that Sohrabuddin was bumped off because he knew too much about Haren Pandya murder. Hitherto, it was suggested that Sohrabuddin was a notorious blackmailer and that he was harassing rich marble traders in Rajasthan who wanted him done away with.
Not only was Sohrabuddin kidnapped with the help of AP police, he was first lured to Hyderabad with the help of a Naxalite renegade Nayeemuddin who was suspected to be working with the AP police on some matters. Nayeemuddin who has now disappeared belongs to Nalgonda, the same place to where Asghar Ali belongs.
Strangely enough, Asghar Ali has been silent ever since he came back. The moment Asghar Ali landed in Nalgonda, he was arrested by the AP police in some old cases and sent to jail in Hyderabad. After a few days, he was transferred to Visakhapatnam jail. Though administrative reasons were cited for his transfer to Vizag jail, analysts wonder whether this was crude attempt to keep him quiet. Sources say that Asghar, though he did not kill Haren Pandya, knows a lot about the case. In fact while in Sabarmati jail he seems to have revealed a lot on this to then superintendent of the prison Sanjiv Bhatt who has now taken up the cudgels against Modi.
It seems that the CBI has zeroed in on two senior IPS officers of AP who were responsible for providing logistical support to the Gujarat police in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case but are yet to interrogate them.
The complicity between Gujarat police and elements of the AP police is still continuing. Sources point out that in a case that is only a few months old, Afaque Equabal, an IT company employee in Hyderabad was picked by the Gujarat police with the help of the AP police on suspicion of being a terrorist Danish Riaz. But he was shown as being arrested from Vadodara while alighting from a train from Secunderabad. “Obviously, the AP police does not want to be seen as assisting the Gujarat police so recourse to this stratagem though everybody knows that this young man was picked up from outside his office in Banjara Hills,” well informed sources told TOI. Everybody knows that Gujarat police has an agenda. Why should elements in AP police help them thereby jeopardizing the interests of the Congress government in AP which has secular credentials,” the sources asked.
Equabal was picked up on June 17,2011 from Hyderabad but was shown as arrested on June 22, 2011 from Vadodara. His arrest went unnoticed because he is a Muslim from Ranchi with not much local contacts.
It seems that the CBI has zeroed in on two senior IPS officers of AP who were responsible for providing logistical support to the Gujarat police in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case but are yet to interrogate them.