The Gujarat government today transfered IPS officers P.P. Pande, G L Singhal and ACP Tarun Barot following a suggestion by the high court bench hearing the 2004 police encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others.
The three senior police officials are connected with the encounter of Ishrat and three others — Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
Transfer of these police officers comes a day before the hearing in the case by the Gujarat high court.
Pande, an ADGP rank officer who is heading the state CID, has been relieved from the additional charge of additional director general of police, state Intelligence Bureau (IB), with immediate effect.
ADGP (law and order) S.K. Sinha has been given the charge as head of the state IB.
Singhal, posted as superintendent of police with the state's Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS), has been transfered to Vadodara city as deputy commissioner of police (Zone 1) while Barot, who was heading the special operations group (SOG) in the city, has been transfered as Mehsana district's departmental police officer, a post which was lying vacant.
The transfer order issued today by the state home department is dated April 19. Incidentally, April 19 was declared as a government holiday due to the elections for the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC).
On April 8, the HC had observed that despite its earlier direction in January, and requisition of transfer of the trio by the special investigation team (SIT) probing the case, they were not transfered.
During the Ishrat encounter in 2004, Pande was heading the city crime branch, Singhal was DCP (crime) and Barot a police inspector with the crime branch.
On June 15, 2004 Jahan was killed along with Sheikh and the two Pakistani nationals Ali and Ghani in an encounter.
Jahan was alleged to be a member of Lashker-e-Tayyaba's suicide squad who had been inducted by top LeT operative Muzamil.
A controversy broke out after Jahan's family claimed that she was just a student and filed an appeal in the court stating so. Gujarat police had claimed that the terrorists were in the state to target chief minister Narendra Modi.