High Court refuses to stay trial in Sohrabuddin encounter case

The Bombay High Court on Thursday refused to stall the trial in the alleged fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Shaikh and his wife Kausar Bi. The HC also issued fresh notices Dahyaji Gobarji (DG) Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiya and Dinesh MN, who were discharged from the case recently.

This comes as a setback to Rubabuddin Shaikh, brother of Sohrabuddin, who had sought stalling of the trial.

A single-judge bench of Justice Anant Badar heard an application moved by Rubabuddin challenging the discharge of Vanzara, Pandiya and Dinesh.

Justice Badar said, “Unfortunately, such cause of action cannot be adopted in this case since staying the trial would only prejudice other accused persons, who are facing trial.”

“Better course of action would be to expedite hearing of this instant applica- tion by serving fresh notices to the respondents (Vanzara, Pandiya and Dinesh),” Justice Badar added while issuing fresh notices to the trio.

The court has also asked the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) to hand over the residential as well as official address of Vanzara, Pandiya and Dinesh, so that Rubabuddin can serve a private notice to them.

The court has now posted

the matter for further hearing on November 16.

It may be recalled that the trio were discharged by a special court earlier in August on the ground that the CBI had not obtained any prior sanction to prosecute the IPS officials.

It may be noted that so far, 15 accused have been discharged from the case and interestingly all these are IPS officials. Surprisingly, the CBI has not challenged

the discharge of either of the accused except one – N.K Amin, prime accused in the case.

In an earlier hearing, the CBI was rapped by another bench of Justice Revati Mohite-Dhere, for not challenging the discharge of other accused in the case. Justice Dhere had pulled up the agency saying, “You (CBI) should be as aggrieved as Rubabuddin over every discharge in the case.”