Sylvester Daniel,the runaway CBI witness since recaptured by police,began as a petty criminal in Rajasthan,went on to become an alleged contract killer,and today holds the key to the CBIs efforts to establish a link between senior Gujarat police officers and slain gangsters Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati. Sylvester has reportedly told the CBI that Sohrabuddin had hired him and Tulsiram,a friend of his,to fire at the Popular Builders office in Ahmedabad in 2004,and that he had got his instructions from Abhay Chudasama,a police officer later suspended and arrested. The firing was connected to an extortion racket allegedly run by Chudasama. Later,Chudasama allegedly told Tulsiram that there was pressure to apprehend Sohrabuddin,and Tulsiram allegedly relayed this to Sylvester,who in turn recounted this in his statement to the CBIs special investigating team last year. Sohrabuddin was killed in 2005,Tulsiram the following year. Sylvester,accused in the Popular Builders firing,was in the custody of Gujarat police when he escaped. He is a key witness for the CBI in the encounter cases involving both Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram. He had reportedly been reluctant to speak about the Sohrabuddin encounter to the police,though he did name police officer Rajkumar Pandian,also suspended,as having aided Chudasama in the abduction of the gangster. Sylvesters statements to the CBI are based on the time he spent with Tulsiram in Udaipur Central Jail,where he was lodged for the murder of a Hamid Lala. Tulsiram reportedly told Sylvester that Chudasama had asked him to travel to Hyderabad with Pandian,so that he could help identify Sohrabuddin who would then be abducted. Tulsiram had allegedly expressed fears of being eliminated himself on account of being a witness to all of this. Tulsiram is also said to have confirmed the policemens plans to keep Sohrabuddin and his wife at a farmhouse. Sylvester,also known as Dipu,used to be a petty criminal in Udaipur before he was hired in the late 1990s by Sohrabuddin,who was based in Ujjain,ran extortion rackets in MP,Gujarat and Maharashtra,and wanted to extend his network to Rajasthan. He first met Tulsiram,then a sharpshooter in Ujjain. Tusliram then worked for Sohrabuddin on most assignments and introduced Sylvester to his mentor. Their partnership eventually led to the Popular Builders firing. Sylvester apparently confesed about this to the Rajasthan Police,too. CBI officials said he had confessed to the Udaipur SP in 2005,after which it was allegedly hushed up in Gujarat. And Sylvester had also fled from Udaipur jail in 2005,some time after the killing of Sohrabuddin,and just when Gujarat CID (Crime) officer Geetha Johri was planning to question him. He was caught by the Gujarat ATS,after which he spent time in Ahmedabad jail before being shifted to Vadodara jail in 2010. Unlike his aide Azam Khan,who has accused the police in Gujarat and Rajasthan of threatening him in efforts to force him to turn hostile,Sylvester has never mentioned a threat. He has been questioned thrice by the CBI and stuck to one version. His confessions were recorded in the progress report that the CBI filed in the Supreme Court in 2010. Many motives have been given to Sylvesters latest escape,one being that he was planning a murder in Rajasthan. He is back in the custody of the Udaipur police.
