The Hindu : National : CBI witness turns hostile in Sohrabuddin case

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CBI witness turns hostile in Sohrabuddin case

Manas Dasgupta

Ghoghari's allegations helped agency frame charges

AHMEDABAD: Even as the privileges committee of the Gujarat Assembly has been asked to go into the action of the Central Bureau of Investigation in arresting a sitting member, the agency, probing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh-Kausar Bi murder case, suffered a setback with one of its key witnesses turning hostile.

Noor Mohammed Ghoghari — an accused in the Popular Builders firing case — whose allegations against some top police officers helped the CBI frame charges of extortion against them as well as the former Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah — on Wednesday claimed that he never made any such charge.

In fact, Ghoghari said he had not given any statement to the CBI and also charged the agency with “torturing and pressuring” him to extract a statement “of their choice.”

The CBI — in its charge sheet filed against the Sohrabuddin murder case accused including Mr. Shah — claimed that Ghoghari admitted that the former DIG and prime accused, D.G. Vanzara; the former Superintendent of Police, Rajkumar Pandian; and the former Deputy Commissioner, Abhay Chudasma extorted Rs. 40 lakh from him after the Sohrabuddin encounter.

Ghoghari was also claimed to have told the CBI that he was once framed in a case by Mr. Chudasma and that he spent three years in jail before a former BJP member of the Lok Sabha arranged for bail.

However, in an application before the Ahmedabad sessions court, where he made an unexpected appearance, Ghoghari claimed that he made no such statement before the CBI. He said he, along with another accused in the Popular Builders firing case, Mahendrasinh Jhala, had been called to the CBI office for interrogation in the Sohrabuddin case.

“I said I did not know anything, but the CBI officials exerted tremendous pressure on us to make statements of their choice, saying that they would [in turn] help us in the Popular Builders firing case.”

When mediapersons approached him in the court complex, Ghoghari repeated the allegation against the CBI, and claimed that its officials had tortured him and Jhala to “extort a statement of their choice,” but he had not given any statement.

Ghoghari said he deliberately missed the last hearing because he was afraid that the CBI would pick him up from the court compound and implicate him in some false cases to pressure him into filing distorted statements in the Sohrabuddin case.

Ghoghari, along with Sohrabuddin, was alleged to have opened fire in the Popular Builders office in Ahmedabad to extort money. The CBI believed that the incident was planned by Mr. Shah and the co-accused to frame a case against Sohrabuddin in Gujarat so that he could be brought to the State at some later date on the plea of court proceedings and eliminated. (It was alleged that Sohrabuddin was a gangster in Rajasthan)

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