Tulsiram Prajapati was an Indian criminal who was killed while in custody at 5 am on 28 December 2006. The case is widely believed to have been an encounter killing by the Gujarat Police. DIG D.G. Vanzara has been in jail for seven years, on charges of having organised this encounter, among others.
On 8 April 2011, the Supreme Court of India directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take up the investigation.
The case came into prominence in 2012, when the CBI, in its chargesheet, listed Gujarat home minister and leading BJP politician Amit Shah as the "kingpin and prime accused" in the case. Amit Shah was arrested in October 2012. Earlier, an unprecedented total of 32 police officers, including six IPS officers including Vanzara, had been arrested for the series of "encounter deaths".
According to the CBI, Prajapati was a witness to the encounter death of Sohrabuddin Shaikh in 2005, and this was why he had to be eliminated.
The encounter killing took place in Banaskantha district. Just 13 days earlier, Vanzara, known to be close to Amit Shah and Modi, was surprisingly transferred there as DIG Border range. Mr Shah claimed that the transfer was an administrative move, not connected to the encounter.
In September 2013, after six years in prison, Vanzara who called Modi "my God", became disgruntled, and apparently claimed a connection between the Tulsiram Prajapati and the unsolved murder of ex-BJP minister Haren Pandya, who was at one time a minister under Narendra Modi. Pandya was shot dead while out on a morning walk in March 2003, a year after his fallout with Modi. In 2003, it was Vanzara who had originally investigated the Pandya murder. Similar claims have also been made by the DNA newspaper, which has suggested that Sheikh was eliminated because of his links to the political murder of Pandya.