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- The Sohrab Uddin Sheikh encounter case was a criminal case in the Gujarat state after the death of Sohrabuddin Anwarhussain Sheikh on November 26, 2005. A special CBI court acquitted all the 22 accused in the case in the alleged encounter killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife. 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 claimed by the police to be associated with the banned global terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence, and was alleged to have 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, the impression was given to political effect that it was to have been Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Sheikh's wife Kauser Bi also disappeared on the same day as his killing. A year later, on December 26, 2006, Sheikh's associate Tulsiram Prajapati, a witness to Sheikh's killing, was also killed in another police encounter shooting. Sheikh was alleged by the police to be extorting protection money from local marble factories in Gujarat and Rajasthan. He was also claimed to have 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 arrested, the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) of the Gujarat police claimed to have found 40 AK-47 assault rifles from his residence Village Jhirniya, District Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. (en)
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