Sohrabuddin Sheikh Fake Encounter

The Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case is an ongoing criminal case in the Gujarat state of India, after the state police killed underworld criminal Sohrabuddin Anwarhussain Sheikh on November 26, 2005, while he was in police custody.

According to the police, apart from being involved in the criminal extortion racket in Gujarat, Sheikh was also involved in arms smuggling in Madhya Pradesh, and also had murder cases registered against him in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Sheikh was also said to be associated with the banned global terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence, and planned to create communal chaos in the state by assassinating "an important political leader". Although the target of Sheikh's plans has never been officially revealed, it is widely believed to have been Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi himself, who is deeply unpopular among the Pakistani establishment and various Islamic terrorist organizations in South Asia after the 2002 Gujarat violence. Sheikh's wife Kauser Bi also disappeared on the same day as his killing. A year later, on December 26, 2006, Sheikh's underworld associate Tulsiram Prajapati, a witness to Sheikh's killing, was also killed in another police encounter shooting.

Sheikh was known for extorting protection money from local marble factories in Gujarat and Rajasthan. He also had links to fellow underworld criminals Sharifkhan Pathan, Abdul Latif, Rasool Parti and Brajesh Singh, who were all members and associates of India's largest organized crime network and underworld mafia operated by Dawood Ibrahim. During investigations before he was nabbed, the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) of the Gujarat police had found 40 AK-47 assault rifles from his village residence in Gujarat.

The state government's lawyer, KTS Tulsi, later admitted before the Supreme Court that the "gun battle" in which Sheikh had died had been staged by the Gujarat police. Such encounters are known in India as encounter killings, and in this case, as "fake encounters". It is alleged that the killing was orchestrated by senior police officers and at the behest of Gujarat's Home minister Amit Shah. Shah is a senior politician in the Bharatiya Janata Party government and a close confidant of chief minister Narendra Modi. Modi, as well as Gulab Chand Kataria, a senior BJP leader and ex-minister from the neighbouring state of Rajasthan, have also been investigated in the matter. More than 10 police officers were subsequently arrested for the killings of Sheikh and Prajapati.

All defendants of the case deny all charges against them, and attribute these politically motivated cases to political vendetta from the Indian National Congress party, that is in opposition in Gujarat but the ruling party in the centre govt, and therefore controls the central investigation agency Central Bureau of Investigation that is in charge of the investigations.