The Ishrat Jahan encounter is the third shootout by Gujarat police that has turned out to be fake – the first two were of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his accomplice Tulsiram Prajapati, while a fourth encounter of Sadiq Jamal Mehtar is under investigation by CBI.
All of them were declared terrorists and killed by the same set of cops led by now-jailed deputy inspector general D G Vanzara.
Advocate Mukul Sinha, who is representing the family of one of the victims, alleged that the encounters were staged for political gains as they helped Modi give the impression of being the toughest fighter against terrorism.
As many as 21 policemen, including IPS officers, are involved in the encounter. Among the IPS officers are the then Ahmedabad joint police commissioner (crime branch) P P Pande, then assistant commissioners of police G L Singhal and N K Amin besides Vanzara, who along with Amin is accused of murdering Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi.
Ishrat, a 19-year-old student of Khalsa College in Mumbai, and three others – Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar – were proclaimed Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists on a fidayeen mission to kill Modi when they were killed on June 15, 2004.The three members of SIT probing Ishrat’s encounter comprised additional director general of police (ADGP) of CISF R R Verma, ADGP of Gujarat police Mohan Jha and inspector general of Gujarat police Satish Verma.
After the verdict, Ishrat’s mother Shamima Kausar demanded capital punishment for her daughter’s killers and blamed the officers for forcing the family to live with the stigma of having terrorist kin.
In 2009, magistrate S P Tamang had investigated into the encounter and declared it as fake. He had held 21 police officersresponsible for the “cold-blooded murder”.
On Monday, a bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari observed that the date, venue and time of the encounter, mentioned by the crime branch in its FIR on the day of the killing, did not match with other investigations. The bench noted though that not all officials shown in the FIR may be involved in the encounter. “Somebody else may also be behind the encounter,” the court observed while discussing the need for further
investigations.
Source: TOI
