The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the 2004 police encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others, along with other experts, on Sunday reconstructed the incident at the original site on the national highway on the outskirts of Ahmedabad city.
A team comprising over a dozen personnel from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), forensic science experts, along with the Gujarat high court-appointed SIT chairman Karnal Singh, and its members Mohan Jha and Satish Verma, visited the site near the Sardar Patel International Airport.
The team began by studying the site and reconstructing the series of events that took place during the encounter as described in the FIR filed in 2004 by the city crime branch officials.
It also examined the place where weapons were found, and where the car carrying Ishrat and others was when bullets were fired at it.
Two of the police officers involved in the over six-year-old encounter — Girish Singhal (presently posted as SP, state ATS) and Tarun Barot (currently heading the city’s special operations group) — were also present to assist the team.
Ishrat and three others — Javed Sheikh, alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar — were killed on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. After the encounter, city crime branch had claimed that the deceased were Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terrorists who had come to kill Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.
Meanwhile, a division bench of Gujarat high court would take up the matter for hearing on April 21. In the last hearing on April 8, the bench had pulled up the Modi government for “hampering the SIT probe.” The bench had also warned the state authorities that if the state does not allow the SIT to take the probe to logical conclusion, the court would hand over the case to any central agency like the CBI or NIA.
It may be recalled that SIT member Satish Verma, in an affidavit in January this year, had stated that the encounter was a staged shootout and he recommended to lodge a fresh FIR to initiate probe against 22 policemen who were involved in the encounter killing.