Ahmedabad: In what could be a setback to
the probe into the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case,
Maharashtra ADGP Satyapal Singh, asked to head the Special
Investigation Team formed by Gujarat High Court, has requested
that he be exempted from the responsibility.
The division bench of justices Jayant Patel and
Abhilasha Kumari had appointed Singh as the head of SIT on May
12.
In a letter to Gujarat High Court, Singh, currently
posted as Additional DGP (Law & Order), has said that the
Maharashtra government was reluctant to relieve him, court
sources said.
Besides, Singh has also stated that he has some
personal reasons for not wanting to take up the job.
He is not familiar with the local language, for one.
Also, as one of the police officers associated with the
encounter, ADGP P P Pande, was his batchmate from the 1980 IPS
batch, Singh is reluctant to head the probe, according the
letter.
The high court appointed Singh after the earlier SIT
chairman Karnal Singh expressed desire to be let off following
his posting to Mizoram.
A copy of Singh's letter has been forwarded to the
state government and other agencies concerned.
Ishrat, along with three others, was killed in a
police encounter on June 15, 2004. Ahmedabad Crime Branch had
claimed that they were LeT terrorists who had come to
assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
But last year the high court set up the SIT in response
to a petition filed by her mother, to probe the genuineness of
the encounter.
The next hearing of the case is on June 24.
PTI
First Published: Friday, June 17, 2011, 21:17