'Lt Colonel Dharamveer Singh had raised a flag over alleged fake encounters in Northeast. He is now facing court martial for insubordination and keeping unaccounted arms... In September 2016, a sensitive situation reached the offices of Indian Army’s Eastern Command in Kolkata. One of its officers, Lt Colonel Dharamveer Singh of the Special Forces, alleged that a team of an army intelligence unit in Nagaland had committed fake encounters and dacoity against civilians in Assam, Manipur and Nagaland in 2010 and 2011.
'A special court on Thursday dropped proceedings against former Gujarat Police officers DG Vanzara and NK Amin for their alleged role in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, ANI reported. On April 30, the court had reserved its verdict on applications filed by them seeking to drop proceedings, The Indian Express reported. The court dropped the proceedings as the Central Bureau of Investigation did not get the Gujarat government’s sanction to prosecute the officers, The Hindu reported.
'Exactly thirteen years ago to the day, Gujarat police shot dead a man called Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Like many similar “encounter” killings in the state at the time, this death, too, would have gone unnoticed in the rest of the country. But a series of developments after the murder on November 26, 2005 linked Sohrabuddin’s name indelibly with that of another man — Amit Shah. Strenuous efforts have been made over the last four and a half years to obliterate that link from public memory.
'In explosive testimony before the special Central Bureau of Investigation court here on Wednesday, Sandeep Tamgadge, chief investigating officer in the 2006 Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case, has said that Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and IPS officers D.G. Vanzara, Dinesh M.N. and Rajkumar Pandiyan were the “principal conspirators” in the controversial killing.
'Over a thousand encounters in a year. That’s the record in Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh. Since March 2017, 49 persons have been killed in over 1,100 encounters, more than 370 have been injured and over 3,300 arrested across the State. Most of the incidents have taken place in districts close to the national capital such as Meerut, Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Saharanpur, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad and Noida... The Opposition parties have not only criticised the encounters, calling them fake, but also questioned why most of the dead were Dalits, Muslims or members of Backward Classes.
'For the last three years, the former investigating officer (IO) of the Sohrabuddin-Kauser Bi, Tulsiram Prajapati killing cases, is facing multiple criminal investigations at the hands of his own agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Evidence has emerged suggesting that the CBI is possibly trying to frame its former IO by manufacturing false evidence against him. The officer in question is Sandeep Tamgadge, a 2001 batch IPS officer belonging to the Nagaland cadre. Tamgadge belongs to Scheduled caste and originally belongs to Nagpur in Maharashtra.
'...In two reports last week, the Caravan had quoted immediate members of Loya’s family, who questioned the circumstances surrounding his death and said that the judge had been offered Rs 100 crore to give an order favourable to the prime accused, BJP president Amit Shah. The judge passed away on December 1, 2014 after a heart attack while in Nagpur to attend a colleague’s daughter’s wedding. In interviews to the magazine’s reporter, Niranjan Takle, members of Loya’s family listed what they said were inconsistencies in the facts surrounding his death...
'In the months leading up to his sudden death three years ago, the judge who was hearing the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case in which BJP chief Amit Shah was the prime accused was allegedly offered a bribe of Rs 100 crore for a “favourable” judgment. The sister of Brijgopal Harkishan Loya – who presided over the CBI special court in the matter till his death on December 1, 2014 – told The Caravan that some weeks before his death, the judge had confided in her about the bribe offer which she alleged had been made by the then chief justice of the Bombay high court, Mohit Shah.
'A special court of the Central Investigation Bureau in Mumbai on Tuesday discharged former Inspector General of Gujarat DG Vanzara and IPS officer Dinesh MN in the alleged fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Vanzara, who was released on bail in April last year, is also the key accused in Ishrat Jahan and Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter cases. He had retired from the police force while in jail in 2014...'
'The Indian Express sting operation on the Ishrat Jahan investigation, carried as a lead story on the front page in today's (June 16, 2016) edition of the newspaper known for its investigative journalism, nails what most of us, who have been working and reporting on this case for years, have been saying for long. That the truth has been the biggest casualty in the political blame game in the extrajudicial murder of the 19-year-old girl from Mumbra, Thane, Ishrat Jahan.
