One of the accused Gujarat policemen in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter on Tuesday surrendered in the local court in Ahmedabad. The then state Anti-Terrorist Squad driver Nathubhai Jadeja, who was part of the team that went to Andhra Pradesh to nab Sheikh under IPS officer Rajkumar Pandian, gave himself up before metropolitan magistrate H A Shah.
The court issued a notice to CID asking the nature of charges against Jadeja and whether the agency wanted to arrest him or not. After the surrender, the court allowed Jadeja to go but asked him to be present before the court on May 24.
In his application to the court, Jadeja said his name had cropped up in media reports about the fake encounter case and if he was caught by the police then he could be physically and mentally tortured.
Hence, he had decided to surrender in the court. The application said on April 26 at the behest of former in-charge officer of the case Rajnish Rai, investigating officials had 'forcibly' taken his statement.
The CID has so far arrested six policemen in the fake encounter case, including the three IPS officers D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian and Dinesh M N. The three IPS officials were arrested on April 24.
The other three policemen arrested in the case are ATS inspector N H Dabhi and two lower rank policmen Ajay Parmar and Santram Sharma. All the six policemen are in judicial custody at present.
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