SC allows journalist to file application on pleas in encounter cases

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today gave liberty to a scribe to move an appropriate application for his plea for further investigation and cancellation of bail granted to former Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah in Soharabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter cases.

A bench of justices H L Dattu and S J Mukopadhaya said the journalist, who conducted the sting operation against BJP MPs Prakash Javdekar and Bhupendra Singh Yadav alleging that they tried to impede investigation in the case, cannot proceed with the fresh writ petition.

The bench asked advocate Kamini Jaiswal, who was appearing for Pushp Kumar Sharma, to file an apprporiate application by giving reference of the matter in which the issue of Shah was dealt with while rejecting the CBI plea to cancel his bail.

“We will consider your application,” the bench said and added that “we are also clarifying that we have not made any opinion on the statement made by the counsel”.

Jaiswal said there was a need for further investigation in the case in the wake of fresh development which emerged from the sting operation carried out by the journalist.

Sharma, the petitioner, alleged that he had captured the “criminal conspiracy hatched and executed” by MPs, senior BJP leaders and advocates on concealed cameras as part of his undercover investigation. He also filed CDs of the video footage along with his petition.

He claimed in his petition that he had caught the two parliamentarians on tape discussing how to get blank vakalatnamas signed by the mother of Tulsiram Prajapati, who was shot dead in a fake encounter in December 2006.

PTI