A Special CBI court in Mumbai on Friday acquitted all the 22 accused in the Sohrabuddin Anwar Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati twin encounters case, citing lack of evidence.

The Special CBI judge SJ Sharma observed in his order that all the witnesses and proofs are not satisfactory to prove conspiracy and murder. The court also observed that circumstantial evidence was not substantial.

Government machinery and prosecution put in a lot of effort, 210 witnesses were brought but satisfactory evidence didn’t come and witnesses turned hostile. No fault of the prosecutor if witnesses don’t speak, the court observed.

During the trial, as many as 92 of 210 prosecution witnesses had turned hostile.

“I am helpless,” Special CBI Judge SJ Sharma said while referring to witnesses turning hostile and proof not being satisfactory against the 22 accused in Sohrabuddin Sheikh case.

The court further dismissed the allegation that Tulsiram Prajapati was murdered through a conspiracy as “untrue”.

Most of the accused are junior-level police officials from Gujarat and Rajasthan.

The “fake encounters” of alleged gangsters Sohrabuddin and Prajapati and the disappearance of the former’s wife Kausar Bi took place in 2005-06, kicking off a major political storm.

The prosecution’s case was that Sohrabuddin was linked with terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Tayiba and was allegedly conspiring to assassinate “an important political leader”, presumably then Gujarat Chief Minister (and now Prime Minister) Narendra Modi.

A total of 38 people were named as accused in the case, of which 16 were discharged in 2014, including 15 by the Special CBI Court Mumbai and one by the Bombay High Court.

These included Amit Shah, the then Rajasthan home minister Gulabchand Kataria, former Gujarat police chief P C Pande and former senior Gujarat police officer D G Vanzara.

The case has attracted much attention as BJP chief Amit Shah, who was Minister of State for Home in Gujarat at the time of the incidents, was one of the accused before being discharged in 2014.

According to the CBI, Shaikh, an alleged gangster with terror links, his wife Kausar Bi and his aide Prajapati were abducted by Gujarat police from a bus when they were on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra from Hyderabad on the night of November 22 and 23, 2005.

Shaikh was killed in an alleged fake encounter on November 26, 2005, near Ahmedabad. His wife was killed three days later and her body was disposed of, the CBI said.

A year later, on December 27, 2006, Prajapati was also shot dead by Gujarat and Rajasthan police in an alleged fake encounter near Chapri on Gujarat-Rajasthan border.

The case was initially probed by the Gujarat CID before the CBI took over in 2010. The Supreme Court in 2013 directed that the trial be shifted to Mumbai from Gujarat on the central agency’s request to ensure a fair trial.