In a bid to establish the alleged link of Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers, including special director Rajinder Kumar, in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case conspiracy, the CBI is now taking help of the Gujarat police as it has recently questioned a number of state cops connected with the case.
Sources said, “The CBI, after filing its first chargesheet in the Ishrat case, is now preparing to file the supplementary chargesheet. The agency is now probing the role of IB’s special director, along with three others — P. Mittal, M.K. Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede.” Sources said the agency is likely to elaborate on their exact role in the supplementary chargesheet, likely to be filed in the first week of August. Ishrat, along with her three associates, Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, were killed in a fake encounter near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
“The agency sleuths are probing all angles in the Ishrat case, including the statements of some witnesses claiming knowledge of political conspiracy behind the fake encounter involving the Gujarat police and the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau. We are investigating all the angles related to it,” sources said. The agency officials have once again recorded statements of certain Gujarat cops in this regard, sources said, adding that these will be mentioned in the supplementary chargesheet.
It has also sought from the Union home ministry the files on the basis of which it changed its stance on the antecedents of Ishrat Jahan. The then under secretary home ministry R.V.S. Mani gave two affidavits before the Gujarat high court within a period of nearly two months, giving contradicting opinions on the antecedents of Ishrat, sources said. In the affidavit filed on August 6, 2009, Ishrat and three others were termed as terrorists while in the affidavit filed on September 30, 2009, it claimed that there was no conclusive evidence to suggest she was a terrorist.