Witness says he lied under CBI pressure

Mumbai: Two more witnesses in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case on Friday turned hostile. The witnesses, Himmat Singh deputy SP from Rajasthan, and police constable Kanti Lal were declared hostile. Mr Singh even got emotional during his testimony and told the court that Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers had threatened to implicate him in this case if he didn’t give a statement as per their instructions, hence he gave a false statement before the magistrate. So far the prosecution has examined around 80 witnesses of whom 55 have turned hostile including the two examined on Friday.

Mr Singh, during his testimony, on Friday claimed that he never gave a voluntary statement in this case. The officer became emotional and was given water to drink in the witness box. “I was made to sit on the floor by a CBI officer when I was called by them at their office. I was warned that if I would not give a statement as per their instructions, they would implicate me in this case and hence I recorded the statement under section 164 as per their instructions,” said Mr Singh. Following this judge S.J. Sharma declared him hostile on request from special public prosecutor B.P. Raj77u.

Mr Singh, in his earlier statement, had said that in the first week of November 2006, the then SP Dinesh M.N. (who has been discharged from this case) had issued an order to form a special team to prevent incidents of theft and burglary. The witness himself and one of the accused, Abdul Rehmanm was heading this special team and 14 policemen from different police stations were part of this team.

It was further mentioned in the statement that on December 25, 2006 Dinesh M.N. directed ASI Narayan Singh to escort Prajapati, an aide of Sheikh, to Ahmedabad.

As per the directions, police constables Dalpat Singh, Yudhveer Singh and Kartar Singh were also supposed to accompany Narayan Singh. Himmat Singh had stated that he had requested M.N. Singh not to send these four policemen on escort duty as they were members of the special task force but the latter got angry and told him to send these men and not to make any entry in the roznamcha of the police station that they were going as an escort on his instruction.