Junior officers may be Johri's best bet

Leena Misra / TNN / May 7, 2007, 01:09 IST

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With the top guns arrested, IG Geetha Johri may have very few options left, the most important one being to find Kause Bi’s remains and establish who her killers were.

AHMEDABAD: With the top guns arrested, IG Geetha Johri may have very few options left, the most important one being to find Kause Bi’s remains and establish who her killers were, since the Narendra Modi government will be answerable to the petition on the woman’s disappearance.
While the hunt for Kause Bi’s remains carried out at Vanzara’s village in Illol on Sunday, she will also have to find out the third person accompanying Sohrabuddin and Kause Bi on the Hyderabad-Sangli bus on November 22-23 night and establish his involvement in the fake encounter.
Sources said unlike her predecessor, DIG Rajnish Rai, who began his probe by arresting the IPS officers, Johri would have preferred to begin ‘‘from the bottom, upwards’’.
Now Johri is expected to take off from the point where she quit the probe last time, which is, examining mobile phone records and the calls made before and during the encounter by police officers and others. Besides, statements of the arrested officers, recorded during their interrogation, assume utmost importance since they are the key ‘‘conspirators’’ in the case.

So far the three IPS officers — D G Vanzara, Raj Kumar Pandian and Dinesh M N — have been booked for conspiring the kidnapping and murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and destroying evidence. However, only Vanzara and Pandian may be responsible for killing Kause Bi and destroying her remains, said sources. A senior officer said, ‘‘The problem in this case is that those arrested are intelligent policemen who know their job too well and can only be proved guilty by material or scientific evidence.’’

At this point, it’s the testimony of lower rung cops who acted on directives of their bosses in the fake encounter which becomes critical. No lower rung policeman has been arrested so far and they may give evidence to nail their bosses. ‘‘Most of the lower-rung policemen involved in the encounter have gone underground, for fear of being arrested,’’ a senior police officer said.
Since the case is under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court, Johri will also have to probe the Tulsiram Prajapati encounter, on which the petitioner has raised doubts, terming Prajapati as a ‘‘material witness’’ to the Sohrabuddin killing.

About the Author

Leena Misra

Leena Misra is senior assistant editor at The Times of India, Ahmedabad. She has written on politics, crime, communal riots of 2002, people, city issues and a lot more. Loves all kinds of music, reading non-fiction and travelling.

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