Supreme court hands over investigation encounter cases to (STF) headed by retired Supreme Court judge Justice MB Shah.

The Gujarat high court had earlier refused to hand over the investigation of two encounter cases to the special task force (STF) headed by retired Supreme Court judge Justice MB Shah. The Gujarat government had sought an investigation by the STF in the Sadik Jamal and Ishrat Jahan encounter cases. The government’s argument was heard by the high court during the hearing of two different petitions filed by the kin of Sadik Jamal, Ishrat and Pranesh alias Javed Shaikh. However, the high court had rejected a probe by the STF and handed over the cases to the CBI. Mukul Sinha, who was lawyer of the victims’ kin in both the cases, had expressly opposed a probe by the STF headed by justice MB Shah. The high court had ultimately asked the CBI to investigate the Sadik Jamal encounter case and find out whether the encounter was genuine or not. The Ishrat Jahan encounter was found to be fake following an investigation by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the high court bench of justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari. Justice Shah is already in charge of a mammoth task. He is chairman of the enquiry commission set up by the Central Government to investigate charges of illegal mining of coal. Last year, he was appointed vice-chairman of the special investigation team set up by the Supreme Court for investigation of black money parked abroad. In addition, justice Shah is the head of the enquiry commission set up by the state government to investigate corruption charges levelled against the government by the Congress. When contacted, justice Shah said he had already started work on the probe into corruption charges levelled against the state government by the Congress. “I am not aware of the Supreme Court order on the encounter cases. Hence I can not comment on it,” he said. Meanwhile, reacting to the Supreme Court judgment, Nitya Ramakrishnan, counsel for petitioner BG Verghese, said, “We are very happy that a Supreme Court judge will probe and monitor the encounter cases.”