An IPS officer of the 1987 batch, his tenure as head of the city crime bureau saw a spurt in encounter killings of criminals. The suspect killings include:
As of September 2013, there were 32 police officers, including six IPS officers, who were in jail for these encounters. Most of them had worked under Vanzara. Vanzara himself had a meteoric rise since the early 2000s, when the encounters to eliminate terrorists began. In 2013, in his letter of resignation, Vanzara stated, On 18 May 2008, ex-DSP N K Amin, also arrested in the case, told the court, "that a police-politician-criminal nexus was in operation in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case". The high level of direct communication from Shah, as minister, to an on-duty officer has also been questioned in court. In the Tulsiram Prajapati case, the encounter killing took place in Banaskantha district. Just 13 days earlier, Vanzara was surprisingly transferred there as DIG Border range. On questioning, Amit Shah could not remember why. Shah has been indicted as the "kingpin and prime accused" in the Tulsiram Prajapati murder case. Vanzara's letter also refers to political mileage obtained from the killings. In the 2007 elections, Modi had asked the electorate as to what was to be done with people like Sohrabuddin, to thunderous responses of "Kill him!". In September 2013, after six years in prison, Vanzara, who calls himself a "nationalist Hindu" and looks upon Narendra Modi as "god", has become disgruntled. He is said to have suggested a connection between the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case and the unsolved murder of ex-BJP minister Haren Pandya, who at one time a minister under Narendra Modi. Pandya was shot dead while out on a morning walk inMarch 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. Vanzara was released on bail on 18 February 2015. He was acquitted in Sohrabuddin case in August 2017, due to lack of evidence.
