Mumbai: One more witness in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case on Wednesday turned hostile, taking the number of such witnesses to 48.
The witness, Majid Khan, a hotel owner in Udaipur, denied in court telling the probe team that police officer Abdul Rehman had told him that Sohrabuddin had been caught and that two days later he came to know Sohrabuddin got killed in an encounter. Khan denied having known Abdul Rehman before.
Khan appeared before the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Wednesday. Answering CBI counsel B P Raju, he told the court that the CBI never recorded his statement and the statement the CBI has in his name was not read out to him and hence he is not aware of its contents.
When Raju asked Khan to identify police inspector Abdul Rehman in the courtroom he replied that he had never met this officer and hence could not identify him.
Following this, CBI judge S.J. Sharma declared Khan hostile on the advocate’s request.
The prosecution case is that Khan’s brother Hamid Lal was a notorious criminal of Udaipur and there were several criminal cases against him at various police stations in Udaipur.
Lal was murdered in 2004 and the police had arrested one Mohammed Azam and his associates for Lal’s murder but all of them were acquitted by the trial court.
Though Lal’s murder case was registered in Hatipole police station most of the investigation was done by inspector Abdul Rehman of Pratap Nagar police station who is an accused in the Sohrabuddin encounter case.
