Two MP police officials arrested by CBI in ‘fake encounter’ case

Indore: Two police officials including Gunnor SDOP were arrested from Madhya Pradesh by a special CBI team from Delhi in the Bansi Gurjar ‘fake encounter' case on Tuesday.
Official sources said that the cops were summoned to Indore from where they were produced before the special CBI court and taken for questioning.
"Edwin Carr, the then sub inspector, now posted as SDOP Gunnor tehsil in Panna district, and the then head constable Neeraj, now posted as ASI in Neemuch, have been arrested for questioning," additional commissioner Amit Singh said.
The officials were involved in an ‘encounter' of opium smuggler Bansi Gurjar, which reportedly took place on Feb 8, 2009. While Neemuch police had claimed that they had killed Gurjar in an encounter, it was found later that he had orchestrated his own killing with the help of a police official by planting body of a disabled man matching his physique, whom he had killed.
While the officials won accolades for the encounter of the smuggler, arrest of another ‘dead' narcotics smuggler from Rajasthan revealed the details.
The smuggler, Ghanshyam Dhakad, had been declared ‘dead' in a road accident in March 2011 but was found alive and taken into custody in 2012 by Rajasthan police.
Dhakad, too, had tried to fake his death in 2011 with Bansi's help. In his statement to the police, he claimed that Bansi Gurjar was still alive. An alarmed MP police launched an investigation and special teams were formed and Bansi was arrested from Ujjain in Nov 2012.
After faking his death, Bansi had acquired a voter identity card in name of his missing brother Shiva Gurjar and continued to deal in narcotics.
Dhakad revealed that he took a cue for faking his death from Bansi. Both of them allegedly killed a man with learning difficulties and fobbed off the death as a hit-and-run case. Dhakad also said that he had paid Rs 13 lakh to Bansi for arranging his lookalike to execute the plot.
The Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court had directed a CBI investigation into this ‘fake encounter' of Bansi Gurjar in 2014 after a public interest litigation was filed by local activists. The petition alleged that the police officials were responsible for killing an innocent person and demanded a CBI probe. The case was under hearing for nearly a year before the court issued its order.