Ishrat Jahan case: CBI registers case against 20 policemen
TheCBIhas booked 20 Gujaratpolicemen, including three IPS officers, on the charge of killingIshrat Jahanand three others in a fake encounter seven years ago. The CBI's Mumbai unit has registered a case of murder and destruction of evidence against the then joint commissioner (crime branch, Ahmedabad) P. P. Pande, former assistant commissioners G. L. Singhal and N. K. Amin, besides former DIG (crime branch) D. G. Vanzara. Vanzara and Amin are accused in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case as well.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by R. R. Verma, which was constituted on the Gujarat High Court's directions, submitted its report to the CBI on Thursday. The high court had ordered a CBI probe on December 1.
The three SIT members - Satish Verma and Mohan Jha, besides Verma - had told the court that the encounter was fake and Ishrat, Javed Gulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amzad Ali Rana and Jishan Johar (the last two were suspected Pakistanis), all of whom were killed in the "encounter", were in the Gujarat Police's custody before they were murdered in cold blood. The SIT also found loopholes in investigations conducted in the case so far. But they mostly endorsed the finding of metropolitan magistrate S. P. Tamang, who was the first to debunk the police claims and named the policemen as accused.
Tamang said the encounter was fake and that the men in uniform had committed pre-meditated murder with the motive of currying favour with chief minister Narendra Modi, who is known for his rightwing politics.
A division bench of the high court had said that the Gujarat Police could not be trusted with the investigation. It had termed the case of "national, if not international, importance". It had, however, asked IPS officer Satish Verma to assist the CBI in the probe despite the Gujarat government's objection, ostensibly because he was allegedly involved in a suspicious encounter. It is, though, said Verma had single-mindedly pursued leads in the case when several other officials either left the SIT midway or declined to be a part of it.
Ishrat, Sheikh, Rana and Johar were killed by the crime branch in what its officials claimed was a gunfight between them and the four alleged LeT members. The police had claimed that they were on a mission to kill Modi. But the SIT told the court that Ishrat and her associates were killed in cold blood by the police much earlier than the official timing of their deaths. The 19-year-old Ishrat was a second-year undergraduate student at Mumbai's Guru Nanak Khalsa College. She took tuition and did embroidery work to support the family and did accounting work for Javed Sheikh, also killed in the encounter.
