The Sohrabuddin Sheikh Encounter Case – When the Bullet Wrote the Truth
“He wasn’t just killed. He was erased, and they tried to erase the truth with him.”
In November 2005, a man named Sohrabuddin Sheikh was killed in what the police claimed was an “encounter”—a gunfight between law enforcement and a wanted criminal. But the reality was far more sinister. What appeared to be another elimination of a gangster turned out to be a staged killing, orchestrated by top police officers and allegedly sanctioned by powerful political figures.
What followed was a web of lies, cover-ups, disappearances—and eventually—a trial that shook the very foundation of how power, politics, and law enforcement operate in India.
Sohrabuddin Sheikh was a small-time criminal with alleged links to arms smuggling and extortion. On November 22, 2005, he, his wife Kausar Bi, and associate Tulsiram Prajapati were traveling by bus from Hyderabad to Sangli. Somewhere along the journey, the trio was intercepted by police officers from Gujarat and Rajasthan, pulled off the bus, and taken into illegal custody.
On November 26, Gujarat police claimed that Sohrabuddin was killed in an encounter near Ahmedabad, alleging he was plotting to assassinate a political leader. But serious gaps in the narrative began to emerge:
No independent witnesses.
No weapons recovered from Sohrabuddin.
His wife Kausar Bi vanished.
Tulsiram Prajapati “disappeared.”
It would later be revealed that Kausar Bi was killed and her body burned. A year later, Tulsiram was also killed in another fake encounter, to silence a potential witness.
