Zeenews Bureau
Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court, Thursday, transferred the probe into the fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The court transferred the case after doubts were raised over the fairness of Gujarat Police in probing the case.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which probed the case, recently termed the encounter as fake. Today, the court asked the SIT chief RR Verma to file a fresh FIR with the CBI within two weeks.
Thane girl Ishrat Jahan, her friend Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai and two suspected Pakistani nationals were gunned down by a Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) team lead by DIG DG Vanzara on June 15, 2004.
The cops had suspected that the group was planning to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The probe in the sensational case was supervised directly by the Gujarat High Court which had constituted the SIT last year to investigate genuineness of the encounter after petitions were filed by Ishrat's mother Shamima Kausar and Gopinath Pillai, father of another victim of the encounter Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai.
Those accused in the case include then JCP (crime branch) P P Pande, suspended DIG DG Vanzara, then ACP G L Singhal and ACP N K Amin -- all IPS officers. There were total of 21 policemen, including the IPS officers, involved in the encounter.
Vanzara and Amin are also accused in the Soharabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case and murder of Sheikh's wife Kausar Bi and are presently behind bars. The Supreme Court had also transferred the Sohrabuddin case to the CBI.
Importantly, former home secretary GK Pillai had recently backed the claim by the Gujarat police that Ishrat and her associates were terror suspects.
Pillai said that the input received from the intelligence agency about Ishrat Jahan – a suspected LeT agent - was absolutely correct.
He also pointed out that Ishrat’s name was mentioned as a martyr on LeT’s website but it was later removed.
First Published: Thursday, December 01, 2011, 11:41