Alleged fake encounter: Suspended policeman seeks bail

Suspended senior police inspector Pradeep Suryavanshi has sought bail in alleged fake encounter case of alleged Chhota Rajan aide Ramnarayan Gupta alias Lakhan Bhaiyya.

Suspended senior police inspector Pradeep Suryavanshi has sought bail in alleged fake encounter case of alleged Chhota Rajan aide Ramnarayan Gupta alias Lakhan Bhaiyya.

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In his bail application, which he filed in the sessions court on Friday, Suryavanshi said the police report, witnesses’ statements and the documents submitted are “clearly unambiguously and unequivocally conflicting, self contradictory and patently devoid of credibility”.

He said the witnesses’ statements recorded during investigation indicates that there was an incident [encounter] on November 11, 2006, at Versova’s Nana-Nani Park.

Then a new version had emanated that Anil Bheda, a key witness in the case, and Lakhan Bhaiyya were abducted.

The bail application says: “After three years… and after he [Bheda] has given earlier statements to different authorities at different points of time in all of which the allegations of abduction and assault, wrongful confinement and elimination of Lakhan Bhaiyya are absent.”

Suryavanshi also claimed that a new angle of money dispute between Janya Sheth, one of the accused who is absconding, and Lakhan Bhaiyya appeared for the “first time three years after the incident and have never been disclosed”.

Suryavanshi alleged that the ballistics report has been falsified to implicate dismissed encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma, a key accused in the case. The application said that the departmental inquiry conducted against him for allegedly threatening a magistrate has also not been proved. Suryavanshi’s application is likely to be heard on April 29.