Gujarat cops lose court’s trust – Ishrat case goes to CBI after withering comments on police

Gujarat High Court today directed the CBI to investigate the fake encounter deaths of Ishrat Jehan and three others, saying Gujarat police couldn’t be trusted to be impartial in the “exceptional” case with “national ramifications”.

The order came less than two weeks after the court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) concluded the trio were shot dead before June 15, 2004 — the day the police had claimed the trio were killed in a gunfight.

The police had claimed they were Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives on a mission to assassinate Narendra Modi.

Today, the court asked SIT chairman R.R. Verma to file a fresh FIR within two weeks against the accused policemen and hand over the report to the CBI.

The central agency has been directed to form a team that should be headed by an officer of the rank of DIG. The team can seek the assistance of SIT member Satish Verma, who had told the court in an affidavit this January, long before the team’s report on November 18, that the encounter was staged.

Ishrat’s family had favoured a probe by the SIT itself or by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) but the court held that the investigation “is beyond the charter of the NIA” as the SIT’s report had confirmed it wasn’t a terror case.

But eventually, the family expressed satisfaction with the outcome. “We are happy with the CBI. This judgment is very good. The CBI has been told to approach the court in case there was any interference from any side,” said I.H. Saiyed, the advocate for Ishrat’s mother.

Rauf Lala, the uncle of the 19-year-old Mumbai college girl, also believes the truth would come out now.

“We are not just hopeful but absolutely confident that the real culprit and mastermind behind the murders will be known after the fresh FIR is registered. We will know the motive, why they killed Ishrat. We will also know the faces of those black sheep in Maharashtra police who helped Gujarat police carry out such horrendous crime.”

The families of the other three victims also welcomed the order. One of them was Mukul Sinha, who represented the father of Pranesh Pillai, among the three others killed. Sinha had initially opposed the CBI probe on the ground that it would “unnecessarily politicise the issue” and wanted the SIT itself to be given the probe.

Sinha was particularly pleased with the court asking the CBI to take the help of SIT member Verma, whose inclusion in the SIT was opposed by the Narendra Modi government.

Twenty-one officers are accused in the case. These including the now-retired K.R. Kaushik, who was then Ahmedabad police commissioner, and the current additional director-general of police P.P. Pandey. He had overseen the encounter as joint commissioner.

Two other accused, deputy inspector-general D.G. Vanzara and deputy superintendent N.K. Amin, are already in jail in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.

This is fourth fake encounter the CBI has been asked to investigate in Gujarat. It is probing the Sohrabuddin and Tulsi Prajapati cases, both handed over by the Supreme Court. The third, about the 2003 killing of alleged criminal Sadiq Jamal, was given by the high court in June this year.