Date:11/07/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/07/11/stories/2008071155560900.htm

New Delhi

Cellphone data very much available: Johri

Manas Dasgupta

She refutes Rubabuddin’s claim that probe team lost data of Vanzara

She claims records are available to the investigating team
Court asks Vanzara to file affidavit in another ‘fake encounter’ case

AHMEDABAD: Geetha Johri, supervising officer in the CID (Crime) investigation of the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, has refuted the claim that the probe team lost the cellphone data of the accused police officers.

In an affidavit filed in the court of Additional Principal Sessions Judge P.B. Desai, Ms. Johri claimed that the CDs containing the cellphone data collected by her predecessor, Rajnish Rai, had been placed on record.

The records were available to the team and included in the additional charge sheet filed against the accused in December last.

In his petition, Rubabuddin, brother of Sohrabuddin, requested the court to order a fresh investigation into the fake encounter on various grounds, the loss of cellphone data being one of them.

He alleged that the team had misplaced the cellphone data of the accused, including the prime accused — the former Deputy Inspector-General, D. G. Vanzara.

Ms. Johri said the data collected subsequently on the basis of the cellphone records were also available to the investigating team for further probe and placed on the records of the court .

There was no question of the records being misplaced or lost.

Meanwhile, Justice B.N. Mehta of the Gujarat High Court has asked Mr. Vanzara and Additional Director-General (CID-Crime) P. P. Pandey to file affidavits in connection with yet another case of alleged fake encounter. The directive was issued on a petition by Shabbir, demanding a CBI inquiry into the killing of his brother Sadiq Jamal Mehtra at Naroda, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, on January 13, 2003.

A former Mumbai-based journalist, now in jail in a fraud case, Ketan Tirodkar, also filed a petition claiming that Sadiq was in Mumbai and was handed over to the Gujarat police by him and the encounter specialist Mr. Daya Nayak a few days before the killing.

Vanzara named

He also named Mr. Vanzara one of the police officers who had taken custody of Sadiq. Tirodkar narrated how he and Daya Nayak created evidence to paint Sadiq as a Lashkar-e-Taiba activist and as terrorist out to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.