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New Delhi, Aug 7: A special CBI court on Tuesday rejected the discharge pleas of former police officers DG Vanzara and NK Amin in the case of 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case, ANI reported. The court had last month concluded hearing arguments of the two accused retired police officers, the CBI and Ishrat’s mother Shamima Kauser, who had challenged Vanzara’s discharge plea.
Former Gujarat DIG Vanzara has sought discharge on the ground of parity with former in-charge DGP of the state P P Pandey, who was discharged in the case in February this year for want of evidence against him.
Ishrat Jahan encounter case: CBI Special Court rejects the discharge pleas of former police officers DG Vanzara and NK Amin pic.twitter.com/jJQyGoYvwx
— ANI (@ANI) August 7, 2018
In his plea, Vanzara had also claimed that the charge sheet filed by the central agency was “concocted” and there was “no prosecutable material” against him.
Amin, who retired as the superintendent of police, sought his discharge on the ground that the encounter was genuine and that testimonies of witnesses produced by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were not reliable.
Ishrat Jahan Encounter Case:
Early on the morning of 15 June 2004, Ishrat Jahan, Javed Sheikh, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana were shot dead on the road leading to the Kotarpur waterworks on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. A magisterial inquiry, SIT probe and CBI investigation – all concluded that this was a fake encounter and the police claim of having fired at her in ‘self-defense’ was a lie.
The police said they were intercepted on the outskirts of Ahmedabad when they were about to enter the city to eliminate the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. In 2009, Gopinath moved the Gujarat High Court and sought a CBI probe into the killing of the four. Ahmedabad Metropolitan court in its judgment said that this encounter was staged and it was challenged by the state.
Almost a decade after the fake encounter, in July 2013, a charge sheet was filed against seven Gujarat police officials and (in a supplementary charge sheet in February 2014) four Intelligence Bureau officials for the unlawful killings, abduction, criminal conspiracy etc.
According to reports, the police said that Pillai’s son Pranesh had changed his name to Javed Sheikh to marry a Muslim woman.
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