Sohrabuddin Before The Shots Rang Out-2/8/10

By Syed Khalique Ahmed and Parimal Dabhi,

02/08/2010

Sohrabuddin Before The Shots Rang Out

Gujarat: Four years after they were killed, Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati are stalking their alleged one-time masters in Gujarat with a vengeance. The duo from Madhya Pradesh may have begun their criminal career in the state, but Rajasthan was their big turf even while they spread wings in Gujarat.

When the police shot him in an alleged fake encounter on November 26, 2005, near Ahmedabad, Sohrabuddin had four police cases against him in Gujarat, one in Rajasthan, two in Maharashtra and a dozen-odd cases in MP. Until he fell, Sohrabuddin perhaps had no clue that he was only a pawn in the hands of politicians and policemen who used him to run a bigger extortion network. The CBI now says Sohrabuddin's masters stage-managed the shootout at a prominent Ahmedabad builder's office in 2004.

If the CBI findings are anything to go by, it was all about money. Extortions were allegedly run and managed by senior police officers for their political bosses and the dead men were mere instruments. According to the CBI chargesheet, Amit Shah, the former Gujarat minister of state for Home who is now in judicial custody, had entrusted the job of eliminating Sohrabuddin Sheikh to three senior IPS officers: D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiyan and Abhay Chudasama.

Sohrabuddin's accomplice Prajapati, who allegedly tipped off the police about Sohrabuddin, didn't know he too was expendable--until the shots rang out a year later. For many in Jhirnia, a village in Madhya Pradesh of over a thousand people, Sohrabuddin is `Sohrab Bhai'. The respect comes largely because of the power that the Sheikh family wields in the region. From taking active part in politics to solving land disputes, and occasionally using muscle power, the family's writ runs even in neighbouring villages.

In Jhirnia, the Sheikhs' house is the largest. Access to it is not easy but then finding Sohrabuddin's house is not difficult. Everyone knows him here. Though his parents are relatively candid about their son's past, his brothers prefer to hide more than what they reveal. They would rather talk about the encounter that ended their brother's life than the times they spent together.

The second of five brothers, the family had practically cut off all ties with Sohrabuddin over his criminal activities. His marriage to a much older Kausar Bi further alienated him from his family. Kausar Bi was Shahnaz before she married Sohrabuddin. Her first husband Sayyed Basharat worked in a factory in Nagda, not far from Jhirnia, the village to which Sohrabuddin belonged. Though it's unclear how and when they started meeting, their relationship appears to have developed in Nagda.

Basharat says he has no clue as to why she left him and their three children. "One day, she simply walked out and went to Indore to live with her sister. When she refused to come back, we went for a religious separation. She married Sohrabuddin soon after." Kausar Bi's father Anwar, who lives in old Bhopal, says Basharat's poverty was the reason why the couple divorced. Sohrabuddin, on the other hand, had enough to splurge. "He was never interested in studying. He always wanted to drive a truck,"' remembers Jhujhar Singh Jadav, a VHP activist and sarpanch of neighbouring Nimbodia Khurd village.

"You ask anyone in the region and they will speak well of the family, not because of their power but the goodwill they have earned by helping others," says Jadav who visits the Sheikhs regularly. The visit of a VHP activist does not surprise anyone here because the family has been associated with the BJP since the Jan Sangh days.
Sohrabuddin's father Anwaruddin was among the early members of the Jan Sangh, his brothers have held small posts in the party. The last panchayat election was the first time in years that nobody from Sohrabuddin's family was elected and that's because the seat was declared a reserved one. Sohrabuddin's younger brother Shahnawazuddin is general secretary of the party's district sports body and was a representative of the BJP MLA till 2008. Youngest brother Nayabuddin too has been associated with the party in the past.

Rubabuddin, whose petition in the Supreme Court led to the arrests of IPS officers and helped unravel the larger plot, is the only one without a party tag. "I have nothing to say," he says tersely, when asked if there was any contradiction in the family's association with the BJP, the party that declared his brother a villain. "I have no idea of the family's party connection. I am only president of the district unit," says BJP Ujjain district chief Anil Jain, looking visibly uncomfortable.

Nayabuddin, however, says the family is at ease with its BJP association. "We haven't left the party because we are ideologically associated with it," he says. The brothers admit that the BJP did try to buy their silence once but backed out when the family stood firm. "We have no love lost for the Congress because it also tried to strike a deal," alleges Nayabuddin.

Rubabuddin and Nayabuddin-who too faces a few criminal cases - are together trying to unravel the mystery of their brother's death. "We did not even know what an encounter meant and didn't understand what he was trying to tell us,"' says Narmada Prajapati of the last meeting she had with her son Tulsiram Prajapati at Ujjain jail, where he was brought from Udaipur for a court appearance in October 2006.

The unlettered mother of two sons and five daughters calls it 'counter' but says she has now heard the word so many times she knows what it means. In letters to his family from prison, Tulsiram, who would have turned 31 in August, had expressed the fear that the police might kill him. Sohrabuddin's brother Rubabuddin says Prajapati was with Sohrabuddin on the bus from Hyderabad to Sangli but escaped death since he was a Hindu and so did not fit the police theory that they were Lashkar terrorists on a mission to kill Narendra Modi. But Sohrabuddin fitted the bill.

Prajapati, who had a dozen cases pending against him in Madhya Pradesh alone, would often go to the Ujjain court for trials. That was the only time his family got to see him. During one of these visits, he wanted his family to apply on his behalf to the human rights commission, saying he feared he would be killed in a possible encounter. But his mother refused to petition anyone, saying she did not have money to post letters.

Prajapati had a long criminal past. "We were happy when he was arrested, thinking he would be reformed," admits his younger brother Pawan. He recalls how Tulsiram started stealing money from home when he took to gambling as a teenager. A senior police officer says that though Prajapati started as a petty criminal, he later became a sharpshooter for Sohrabuddin, whom he met in Bhairugarh jail. Sohrabuddin had arranged for Tulsiram's bail because his own family did not have the means, and the inclination, to set him free.
Ironically, both Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati have only one case against them in Rajasthan, the state where they earned their bucks and the ire of policemen and politicians when their extortion began to pinch the influential marble traders' lobby both in Gujarat and in Rajasthan.

Sohrabuddin and Prajapati, already history-sheeters in Rajasthan by 2003, decided to capitalise on south Rajasthan's abundant marble trade and the easy pickings it promised. Their plan: extort protection money from marble traders who were spread across the districts of Udaipur, Rajsamandh, Bhilwara and even Chittorgarh. Harassed, the marble traders approached politicians and the Rajasthan police for help.

A now retired police official says Sohrabuddin's effort to extort money from Mariam Marbles in Udaipur was the last straw. "There is nothing on record about how much money they might have extorted before that because marble traders seldom approach the police. The owner of Mariam Marbles approached Hamid Lala, also a criminal, to help him deal with Sohrabuddin," he says.

According to the police, Lala confronted Sohrabuddin, demanding that he leave Udaipur. "Eager to drive fear into the mind of marble traders, Sohrabuddin and Prajapati planned the very public murder of Lala. Prajapati, a sharpshooter, pulled the trigger, but there was not enough evidence to prove it in court," says the officer.

Following Lala's murder, Sohrabuddin and Prajapati soon escaped to MP, leaving behind an enraged Dinesh MN, then Udaipur superintendent of police. After the murder, Dinesh reportedly said the public killing of Lala was a personal insult to him. Recalling those days, senior police officers say that Dinesh assembled and sent a team of his best officers to look for them in MP.

The team arrested Sylvester, Rafiq and Azam Khan but Sohrabuddin and Prajapati escaped. The Hamid Lala murder in 2004 was the last time Sohrabuddin was in Rajasthan--he was killed on November 26, 2005, and Prajapati was arrested five days later in Bhilwara. This was touted as Dinesh's seventh encounter and he made page one headlines in local newspapers across the state. Almost a year later, on December 29, 2006, Prajapati was gunned down while being escorted to Udaipur jail from a court hearing in Ahmedabad.

Source: The Indian Express