D G Vanzara appears before Mumbai court in Sohrabuddin case

MUMBAI: Former Gujarat deputy inspector general of police D G Vanzara today appeared before the special CBI court here which is hearing Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter killing cases.

This was Vanzara's first appearance before the trial court after he got bail in the Ishrat Jahan encounter killing case from a Gujarat court earlier this week.

The Bombay High Court had given him bail in the Sheikh and Prajapati encounter cases last September and directed him to attend the trial court in Mumbai thrice a week.

Sohrabuddin, a gangster who the Gujarat police claimed had links with the Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, and his wife Kausar Bi were allegedly abducted by Gujarat ATS from Hyderabad on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra in 2005.

He was killed in a fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005. His wife disappeared and was believed to have been killed too.

Tulsiram, Sheikh's aide and eyewitness to the fake encounter, was killed allegedly by Gujarat police at Chapri village in Banaskantha district in December 2006.

The Sohrabuddin case was transferred to Mumbai in September 2012 at CBI's request for a fair trial. In 2013, the Supreme Court clubbed the Prajapati case with it.