Published Sep 28, 2026 | 8:40 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 28, 2026 | 8:40 PM
Supreme court of India
Synopsis: The Supreme Court has issued notice to 22 persons acquitted in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh encounter killing case, after taking note that 92 of the 210 trial witnesses had turned hostile. The court said it would examine statements of some witnesses while hearing a petition by Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin Shaikh challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision upholding the acquittals. The court also said that it would not examine the challenge to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s discharge in the case.
The Supreme Court has issued notice to 22 persons acquitted in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh ‘encounter’ killing case, including 21 policemen from Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, on a petition challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision upholding their acquittal, Livelaw reported.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana on Monday, 28 September issued the notices on a petition filed by Rubabuddin Shaikh, the younger brother of Sohrabuddin Shaikh.
The Bench took particular note of the fact that 92 of the 210 witnesses examined during the trial had turned hostile.
“92 witnesses turning hostile is a serious concern. Although it was a concurrent finding, whether there was a fair and just trial – that’s to be considered,” Justice Bagchi said.
The Chief Justice said the Bench wanted to examine the statements of some of the witnesses.
The apex court also made it clear that the present proceedings would not examine the challenge to the discharge of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the case.
It noted that the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court had previously rejected petitions challenging Shah’s discharge.
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Senior Advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, appearing for Rubabuddin, told the court that it was a case of a “fake encounter” in which the petitioner’s brother, sister-in-law Kausar Bi and his friend Tulsiram Prajapati were killed in “cold-blooded murder”.
Adv Naidu said Sohrabuddin, who was critical of the police, was picked up by plainclothes policemen while travelling on a bus from Hyderabad and was later killed in an encounter.
He said Rubabuddin had been pursuing the matter since 2010 and that it was at his instance that the investigation was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The acquittal, Adv Naidu submitted, was founded on witnesses turning hostile and the case required reconsideration.
Senior Advocate K Parameshwar, appearing for some of the acquitted persons, said the case involved “concurrent findings of acquittal by very reasoned judgments”.
Justice Bagchi responded: “You should satisfy our conscience, wholesale witness turning hostile!”
“We would like to issue notice, we would like to see the statements of some of the witnesses…we want to satisfy ourselves,” Chief Justice Surya Kant said.
Adv Parameshwar said the matter could be listed for an early hearing as the acquitted persons did not want the case to remain pending for a long time.
Adv Naidu also informed the court that another brother of the deceased, Nayabuddin Shaikh, had filed a petition and sought that the two matters be tagged.
Sohrabuddin was killed in an “encounter” near Ahmedabad, Gujarat on 26 November. Kausar Bi was killed three days later at Ilol village and her body was burnt. Prajapati was killed in another encounter on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border in 2006.
In December, Sohrabuddin’s brother wrote to the Chief Justice of India alleging that Sohrabuddin had been murdered with police involvement.
The Supreme Court subsequently directed the Gujarat Crime Investigation Department to hand over the investigation to the CBI and ordered that the trial be shifted from Gujarat to Mumbai. The case concerning Prajapati’s encounter killing was clubbed with the Sohrabuddin case.
Of the 210 witnesses examined during the trial, 92 turned hostile.
The Special CBI Court in Mumbai acquitted all the accused in 2018, holding that the prosecution had failed to establish a cogent case of a conspiracy to kill Sohrabuddin and the others.
An appeal against the acquittal was filed in the Bombay High Court in 2019. The High Court recently upheld the trial court’s judgment, finding no ground to interfere with the acquittal.
The High Court held that the prosecution case rested on circumstantial evidence and contained “several broken links in the chain of circumstances”. It found that the prosecution had failed to establish that Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi had been abducted by the police or to establish a motive for staging a fake encounter.
The High Court also held that the large number of hostile witnesses did not, ipso facto, establish that the trial had not been conducted properly.
It further recorded that there was no evidence establishing a politician-police nexus behind the alleged encounters.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
