MUMBAI: A special CBI court that last week acquitted 22 accused in the alleged fake encounter of gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh (38) and murder of his wife Kausar Bi in 2005 and the alleged staged encounter of Shaikh’s associate Tulsiram Prajapati a year later said it appeared that rather than finding the truth, the CBI, the premier investigating agency, had a pre-meditated theory and a script intended to implicate political leaders.In a 350-plus-pages-long judgment, portions of which were seen by TOI on Friday, special CBI judge S J Sharma said: “I have no hesitation in recording that during the investigation of these offences, the CBI was doing something other than reaching the truth of these offences.”The judge on December 21 acquitted 22 accused, including 21 junior-level cops from the Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh police . The CBI’s case was that the three were abducted by police and killed.While the judge called Prajapati’s encounter genuine, he said the entire chain of circumstances surrounding Sohrabuddin’s death could not be established. The court further stated that the CBI failed to establish that Kausar Bi travelled with her husband and was subsequently abducted along with him, illegally detained in farmhouses in Gujarat, later killed, and her body burnt and disposed of in a river bed.During the year-long trial, 92 of the 210 prosecution witnesses turned hostile. The court said the CBI had “created evidence” and in the chargesheet placed witness statements “purported” to have been recorded under Section 161 (recorded by a police personnel) or Section 164 (recorded by a magistrate) of the Criminal Procedure Code.“Anyhow, the CBI created the evidence and such statements could not withstand the judicial scrutiny of the court and the witnesses whose statements were purportedly recorded deposed fearlessly before the court clearly indicating that their purported statements were wrongly recorded by the CBI during investigation to justify its script to implicate political leaders,” the court said.The judge also stated that several hostile witnesses had broken down in court and had said they were pressured or coerced by the CBI to depose falsely.The judge pointed out that his predecessor in the case, special CBI judge M B Gosavi, while passing an order in the discharge plea of “accused number 16” (BJP president Amit Shah ) clearly recorded that the investigation was politically motivated. Shah was discharged in the case in December 2014. “Having given my dispassionate consideration to the entire material placed before me and having examined each of the witnesses and the evidence closely, I have no hesitation in recording that the agency thereafter nearly did what was required to reach that goal rather than conducting an investigation in accordance with law,” the court has held in its judgment.The court pointed to the “negligence” of the CBI towards the investigation and said it clearly indicated that they hurriedly completed it by using a replica of the earlier recorded investigation and implicating cops who appeared innocent and had no knowledge of any conspiracy.Explaining the position of the witnesses in court, the judge said it was clear that their statements were wrongly recorded by the CBI during investigations. “I had the occasion of seeing the deposition of the witnesses while they were in the witness box in this court, which clearly reflected that they were speaking the truth before this court,” the judge said.The court said while it was aware of the degree of agony and frustration that may be caused to society in general and particularly the families of the trio after such serious crimes go unpunished, the law did not permit it to punish the accused based on moral conviction or suspicion alone.The court said it was a matter of regret that the reported killings of Sohrabuddin and Prajapati were going unpunished. “So also, Kausar Bi, wife of Sohrabuddin disappeared and the script of the CBI during investigation that she was killed and set ablaze is lacking evidence and is also going unpunished. However, just for the sake of record, the accused cannot be punished holding them guilty on moral or suspicion grounds. I have therefore no options to conclude that the accused are not guilty and are to be acquitted,” the judgement has stated.