Ishrat case goes to CBI, slap for Gujarat police
In yet another setback to the Narendra Modi government, the Gujarat high court on Thursday ordered the CBI to investigate the 2004 fake encounter death of teenager Ishrat Jahan and three others, saying the Gujarat police does not instil confidence among victims.
The court also directed the special investigation team to file a fresh FIR in the case. A division bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari directed SIT chief R.R. Verma to file an FIR within two weeks and transfer the case to the central investigation agency, obse-rving that the case should be considered an “exceptional one, which has national ramifications”.
The high court also ordered CBI to probe into the claims made by the Gujarat police after the 2004 killings that Ishrat and three others were Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terrorists on a mission to kill chief minister Narendra Modi. Ruling out handing over the sensitive case to the Gujarat police, the National Investigating Agency and the SIT, the bench listed a set of reasons for its mandate in favour of the CBI.
The court cited 12 reasons for not tasking the Gujarat police with the investigation, and in a clear declaration of lack of trust said: “The agency probing the case must instil confidence and sho-uld have credibility among victims, therefore we find it fit not to assign the case to the state police”.
The court also ruled out assigning the investigation to the SIT, citing differences of opinion among its members and a majority of them not being willing to continue with the probe as the reason for not handing the responsibility to it.
The high court also did not give its mandate to the NIA, citing issues concerning its jurisdiction and competence.
Based on a SIT report, the high court had recently ruled that the encounter in which Ishrat and three others were killed was staged by the police. Ishrat, who hailed from Mumbra in Maharashtra’s Thane district, along with Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and
Zeeshan Johar, was killed on June 15, 2004 in Ahmedabad. — PTI
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