Haren Pandya killed in 2003; NGO moves SC in 2019 for fresh probe
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 24
Almost 16 years after former Gujarat minister Haren Pandya was killed, an NGO on Thursday filed a fresh petition in the Supreme Court seeking a court-monitored probe into his murder, claiming that some “startling information” has recently come to light.
Pandya, who was a minister of state for home in the then Narendra Modi government in Gujarat, was shot dead on March 26, 2003, in Ahmedabad near Law Garden during morning walk.
A Special POTA (Prevention of Terrorist Activities, Act) court had in 2007 convicted all 12 accused and awarded life imprisonment.
However, on August 29, 2011, a Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court slammed CBI for shoddy probe and acquitted all the accused. CBI has challenged the acquittals in Supreme Court.
Now, petitioner Centre for PIL has claimed that there was fresh material requiring de-novo probe.
“New pieces of information that have come to light regarding the possibility of IPS officers, including D G Vanzara, being involved in the conspiracy to kill Pandya clearly show that the involvement of the senior functionaries of the police as well as possible complicity of political figures. The investigation has clearly been ‘botched’ to benefit powerful figures in the administration,” it said.
Referring to a recent testimony of a witness in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, the petition said a witness has revealed that during his deposition Sohrabuddin had told him that Pandya was murdered as a part of a contract killing for which the contract was given by DG Vanzara.
“He also reveals that Sohrabuddin’s associate Tulsiram Prajapati along with two others had murdered Pandya as part of that contract. In his deposition, he mentions that he had already given this information to CBI in 2010,” the petition claimed.
The petition — which made Ministry of Home Affairs and CBI as parties in the case — sought production of the statement of Vanzara to the CBI and an “inquiry into the circumstances in which an identity sketch of the assassin drawn in 2003 that matches Tulsiram Prajapati more than the accused put on trial and the nature of investigation done”.
It demanded an inquiry against the officers who conducted the earlier investigation and hold the errant officials accountable for the “botched up” probe.
