Four years after they were killed, Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati are stalking their alleged one-time masters in Gujarat with a vengeance.

The duo from Madhya Pradesh may have begun their criminal career in the state, but Rajasthan was their big turf even while they spread wings in Gujarat. When the police shot him in an alleged fake encounter on November 26, 2005, near Ahmedabad, Sohrabuddin had four police cases against him in Gujarat, one in Rajasthan, two in Maharashtra and a dozen-odd cases in MP. The CBI now says Sohrabuddin?s masters stage-managed the shootout at a prominent Ahmedabad builder?s office in 2004.

If the CBI findings are anything to go by, it was all about money. Extortions were allegedly run and managed by senior police officers for their political bosses and the dead men were mere instruments.

According to the CBI chargesheet, Amit Shah, the former Gujarat minister of state for home who is now in judicial custody, had entrusted the job of eliminating Sohrabuddin Sheikh to three senior IPS officers: DG Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiyan and Abhay Chudasama.

Sohrabuddin?s accomplice Prajapati, who allegedly tipped off the police about Sohrabuddin, didn?t know he too was expendable?until the shots rang out a year later.

For many in Jhirnia, a village in MP of over a thousand people, Sohrabuddin is ?Sohrab Bhai?. From taking active part in politics to solving land disputes, and occasionally using muscle power, the Sheikh family?s writ runs even in neighbouring villages.

The second of five brothers, the family had practically cut off all ties with Sohrabuddin over his criminal activities. His marriage to a much older Kausar Bi further alienated him from his family.

Kausar Bi was Shahnaz before she married Sohrabuddin. Her first husband Sayyed Basharat worked in a factory in Nagda, not far from Jhirnia. Basharat says he has no clue as to why she left him and their three children. ?One day, she simply walked out and went to Indore to live with her sister. When she refused to come back, we went for a religious separation. She married Sohrabuddin soon after.?

Sohrabuddin?s family has been associated with the BJP since the Jan Sangh days. Sohrabuddin?s father Anwaruddin was among the early members of the Jan Sangh, his brothers have held small posts in the party. The last panchayat election was the first time in years that nobody from Sohrabuddin?s family was elected and that?s because the seat was declared a reserved one.

Sohrabuddin?s younger brother Shahnawazuddin is general secretary of the party?s district sports body and was a representative of the BJP MLA till 2008. Youngest brother Nayabuddin too has been associated with the party in the past. Rubabuddin, whose petition in the Supreme Court led to the arrests of IPS officers and helped unravel the larger plot, is the only one without a party tag.

?I have no idea of the family?s party connection. I am only president of the district unit,? says BJP Ujjain district chief Anil Jain. Nayabuddin, however, says the family is at ease with its BJP association. ?We haven?t left the party because we are ideologically associated with it,? he says.

The brothers admit that the BJP did try to buy their silence once but backed out when the family stood firm. ?We have no love lost for the Congress because it also tried to strike a deal,? alleges Nayabuddin.

Sohrabuddin?s brother Rubabuddin says Tulsiram Prajapati was with Sohrabuddin on the bus from Hyderabad to Sangli but escaped death since he was a Hindu and so did not fit the police theory that they were Lashkar terrorists on a mission to kill Narendra Modi.

Prajapati, who had a dozen cases pending against him in MP alone, would often go to the Ujjain court for trials. That was the only time his family got to see him. During one of these visits, he wanted his family to apply on his behalf to the human rights commission, saying he feared he would be killed in a possible encounter. But his mother refused to petition anyone, saying she did not have money to post letters.

Prajapati had a long criminal past. ?We were happy when he was arrested, thinking he would be reformed,? admits his younger brother Pawan. A senior police officer says though Prajapati started as a petty criminal, he later became a sharpshooter for Sohrabuddin, whom he met in Bhairugarh jail. Sohrabuddin had arranged for Tulsiram?s bail because his own family did not have the means, and the inclination, to set him free.

Ironically, both Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsi Prajapati have only one case against them in Rajasthan, the state where they earned their bucks and the ire of policemen and politicians when their extortion began to pinch the influential marble traders? lobby both in Gujarat and in Rajasthan.

Sohrabuddin and Prajapati, already history sheeters in Rajasthan by 2003, decided to capitalise on south Rajasthan?s abundant marble trade and the easy pickings it promised. Their plan: extort protection money from marble traders who were spread across the districts of Udaipur, Rajsamandh, Bhilwara and even Chittorgarh. Harassed, the marble traders approached politicians and the Rajasthan police for help.

The Hamid Lala murder in 2004 was the last time Sohrabuddin was in Rajasthan?he was killed on November 26, 2005, and Prajapati was arrested five days later in Bhilwara. Almost a year later, on December 29, 2006, Prajapati was gunned down while being escorted to Udaipur jail from a court hearing in Ahmedabad.

With Syed Khalique Ahmed & Parimal Dabhi in Gujarat