New Delhi:
Suspended Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Rajkumar Pandian, who has been in jail for over seven years after being arrested for his alleged involvement in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, was today granted bail by the Supreme Court.
Mr Pandian had moved the Supreme Court after his bail petition had been rejected by the Bombay High Court in November. He had argued that he had been languishing in jail for nearly seven years and the records, running into over 3,000 pages, had yet to be provided to the trial court.
Mr Pandian, along with fellow IPS officers Abhay Chudasama and Dinesh M N, and a few junior policemen, have been lodged in Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai after the Supreme Court, in its order passed in September last year, transferred the trial in the case to Mumbai from Ahmedabad.
The court, while passing its order last year, had accepted the CBI's plea that the accused were intimidating witnesses, and a free and fair probe in the case could not be possible in Gujarat.
Mr Sheikh and his wife were allegedly picked up by Gujarat's Anti-Terrorist Squad from Hyderabad and killed in a suspected fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November, 2005.
A 1996 batch IPS officer, Mr Pandian was arrested by the Gujarat police's CID (Crime) in 2007. The investigation of the case was later transferred to the CBI.