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Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Ahmedabad Crime Branch Abhay Chudasama was on Wednesday arrested in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case. He is the fourth police officer to be taken into custody in connection with the encounter.
Central Bureau of Investigation's Deputy Inspector General P Kandaswamy confirmed that Chudasama had been arrested. He has been accused of conspiring to kill Sohrabuddin.
This is the first arrest by the CBI after the Supreme Court handed over the inquiry to the investigating agency on January 12 to probe into the alleged fake encounter of Sohrabuddin.
Sohrabuddin was allegedly killed by the Gujarat police, with the help of their Andhra Pradesh counterparts, in November 2005. The police claimed that he was planning to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Deputy Inspector General D G Vanzara, Raj Kumar Pandian of the Gujarat cadre and Dinesh M N of the Rajasthan cadre, along with 11 other policemen, are already behind bars in connection with the case.
The CBI had registered a case in February against Gujarat police officials under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including criminal conspiracy, murder and kidnapping.
The state Criminal Investigation Department, which had earlier investigated and arrested 14 policemen including three IPS officers, had filed a charge-sheet against them in court.
The case has turned out to be a major embarrassment for the Narendra Modi-led government in the Supreme Court, which slammed the Gujarat government's probe, saying there were factual discrepancies in the action taken report and the charge-sheet.
The court had asked the CBI to probe whether there was any larger conspiracy involved in Sohrabuddin's death and asked the agency to submit the report in six months.