Asked Pandya's family to tell him to contact Vanzara: Witnesses to court

MUMBAI: The special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court conducting the trial in the 2006 Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case on Thursday recorded the testimony of two witnesses. The witnesses, Gujarat police officers, said that two days before Prajapati's alleged fake encounter, they had gone to the residence of PSI Ashish Pandya and had given a message to his family to ask Pandya to contact senior police officer DG Vanzara. Pandya was leading the team that is accused of killing Prajapati in the encounter.

According to Kanji Jadeja, a witness, Pandya was on leave and had gone to his village and could not be contacted, so Vanzara had asked him to go to his house and ask Pandya to contact Vanza-ra.  Jadeja, who was a police sub-inspector in 2006, said in his statement that on December 25, 2006 DG Vanzara the then-range deputy IG, Border Range in Bhuj in Gujarat had called Jadeja in his chamber around 6 pm and asked him to go to Pandya’s residence.

Pandya at that time was at his village, Meghpar, in Bhuj. Since Jadeja’s friend Meghjibhai Mahe-shwari was a Meghpar native, he asked him to accompany him.

 According to Jadeja, they went to Pandya's house by car and reached there within 20 minutes. However, Pandya was not present at his home so they left message for him to contact Vanzara at the earliest.

 Similarly, Maheshwari who was head constable in 2006 also confirmed the statement given by Jadeja and told the court that he had accompanied Jadeja to Meghpar.

 He had mentioned in his statement that at that time Pandya was on leave. He had also said that the message was that Vanzara had some urgent, secret work, and hence he had asked Jadeja to visit Pandya's house.