By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme court Monday cancelled the anticipatory bail to a suspended Gujarat police officer allegedly involved in the November 2005 staged killings of Ujjain resident Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife, paving the way for his custodial interrogation in the matter.
A bench of Justices Tarun Chatterjee and P.K. Balasubramanyam annulled Deputy Superintendent of Police Narendra Kumar Amin’s anticipatory bail after a first-hand scrutiny of an Ahmedabad court’s order granting him bail.
The bench cancelled Amin’s bail on an unusual special leave petition filed by the Gujarat government challenging the session court’s order directly before the apex court, without first going to the Gujarat High Court.
With the cancellation of bail, the apex court paved the way for Amin’s custodial interrogation to unravel his alleged role in the larger plot to eliminate Sohrabuddin, his wife Kausar Bi and his friend Tulsiram Prajapati.
On Friday, the bench had reserved its verdict on the Gujarat government petition. Amin is suspected to know how exactly Kausar Bi had been killed and how her body was disposed of.
Earlier Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam, who is assisting the court in the case, had pointed out that the charge sheet filed by the Gujarat police team, headed by its Inspector General of Police Geetha Johri, was silent on how exactly Kausar Bi had been killed.
Seeking continued monitoring of the case, even after the investigation is over, Subramaniam had argued that of the police officers Amin, who is suspected to have some knowledge in the case, had never been put to custodial interrogation as he had secured anticipatory bail.
He had argued that even the government was not interested in putting him to custodial interrogation as it never sought to challenge the Ahmedabad sessions court’s bail order, despite the lacunae.
It was this argument which prompted the apex court to direct the Gujarat government to directly file a special leave petition before it to let it undertake a first hand scrutiny of the sessions court’s bail order for Amin.