Chetan Singh Chaudhary, 34, the RPF constable who shot dead 4 people including his senior officer.
While on board the Jaipur-Mumbai Central Superfast Express on July 31, is completely sane and was aware of what he was executing, says the GRP charge sheet filed on Friday.
In the 1203-page charge sheet the Government Railway Police cites testimonies of 150 witnesses, including those passengers who saw the dismissed Railway Protection Force constable pick out men because of their Muslim identity before shooting them dead.
According to the GRP officers they have recorded statements of three of these witnesses before the Borivali metropolitan magistrate court under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
In addition to the witness testimonies the investigators have also relied on the CCTV recordings from within the train as Chetan Singh moved between compartments looking for potential victims. The videos shot by the passengers showing the constable standing next to the body of one of his victims and giving an incendiary speech, justifying his acts violence against Muslims, has also been relied upon in the charge sheet.
The charge sheet states that Singh has since shown no evidence of any mental illness and that he had in fact intended to kill the Muslim passengers. The charge sheet also goes on to say that Chetan Singh killed his senior, ASI Tikaram Meena in anger after he did not allow the constable to disembark at Valsad as he wanted to. The Jaipur-Mumbai Central Superfast Express does not stop at Valsad.
The GRP officers submitted the charge sheet on Friday in the Borivali Metropolitan Magistrate Court and requested that Chetan Singh be produced via video conferencing as it was not safe to physically bring him to the court.
He is at present lodged at a prison in Akola district. His lawyer Jaywant Patil however told the court the process should be done in his (Patil’s) presence and requested the court to issue a production warrant for bringing the accused before the court. The next hearing is posted for November 2nd.
Chetan Singh has been booked under sections 302 (murder), 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc) and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as relevant sections, of the Railways Act and the Maharashtra Prevention of Defacement of Property Act.
In the early hours of July 31, as the superfast train moved from Vaitarna to Mira Road, Singh, who had complained of uneasiness and wanted to disembark at Valsad, first shot dead RPF Assistant Sub-Inspector Tikaram Meena and another passenger, Abdul Bhanpuwala in coach B5 of the express train with his automatic weapon.
After that, he shot dead another passenger, Sayyed Saifuddin in the pantry car and then finally another passenger, Asgar Abbas Shaikh in coach S6. He was arrested at Mira Road station by the GRP and RPF officials after some passenger pulled the emergency chain forcing the train to stop.