By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court has deferred to Thursday its verdict on the staged shootout of Ahmedabad resident Sohrabbudin Sheikh and the murder of his wife Kausar Bi, which resulted in the arrest of three senior police officials. The court was to deliver its ruling Tuesday on a habeas corpus petition seeking a direction to the Gujarat government to produce Kausar Bi, missing since Sohrabbudin's killing on Nov 26, 2005 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. In a report filed Monday to the apex court, the Gujarat government admitted that police had killed Kausar Bi after her husband. When the matter came up for hearing before Justice Tarun Chatterjee, he adjourned the matter to Thursday after consulting his court master on some technical aspects. "The court will pass its order on Thursday," he declared. He said the matter would be listed before the same bench, comprising himself and Justice P.K. Balasubramanyam. The court is also expected to pass its order on the union government's plea for a CBI probe into the killings. Three senior police officers – Inspector General D.G. Vanzara and Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Pandyan of Gujarat and Alwar Superintendent of Police M.N. Dinesh of Rajasthan – have been arrested for the killings. Sheikh was travelling from Hyderabad to Sangli in Maharashtra with his wife Kausar Bi when they were picked up along with an unidentified man from a bus. Soon after the abduction, Vanzara had announced Sheikh's killing in a police shootout, dubbing him a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist who had entered the state allegedly from Hyderabad on a mission to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.