Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed the appeals challenging the acquittal of 22 individuals accused in the 2005 alleged fake encounter of gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife Kausar Bi, and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati. A bench comprising Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad upheld the December 2018 judgment of a special CBI court, which had cleared all the accused due to a lack of “cogent evidence.”
The appeals were filed by Shaikh’s brothers, Rubabuddin and Nayabuddin, who argued that the original trial was flawed and that several witnesses had claimed their testimonies were incorrectly recorded. However, the High Court’s decision reaffirms the lower court’s finding that the prosecution failed to establish a conspiracy or prove the involvement of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. The 22 acquitted individuals included 21 junior-level police officers from Gujarat and Rajasthan, as well as the owner of a farmhouse where the victims were allegedly detained.
The case, which was investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) following a Supreme Court mandate, has been one of the most high-profile legal battles in India over the last two decades. The CBI had previously informed the High Court that it accepted the 2018 acquittal and would not be filing its own appeal. According to the original CBI probe, Shaikh was killed in November 2005 near Ahmedabad, followed by Kausar Bi a few days later, while Prajapati—a key witness—was killed in a separate encounter in December 2006.
The special court had noted in its 2018 ruling that the CBI failed to prove a nexus between the police officers and local politicians, many of whom had been discharged earlier in the proceedings. With the High Court now dismissing the family’s plea for a retrial, the legal chapter regarding these specific 22 accused appears to have closed. A detailed copy of the High Court’s judgment is expected to be released shortly.
