In a startling revelation, the CBI probe into the Ishrat Jahan encounter case has revealed that Gujarat cops allegedly used same weapons to kill the Mumbai-based teenager which they had used in the alleged fake encounter of Sadiq Jamal Mehtar in 2003.
The agency, sources said, is set to question former deputy inspector-general of police, D.G. Vanzara and former Gujarat Home minister Amit Shah in connection with Ishrat Jahan case.
According to sources, the agency recently conducted ballistics tests of the weapons used in the encounter of Ishrat Jahan and Sadiq Jamal. Sources said, “Ballistic tests were conducted to ascertain if all the police officers mentioned in the Gujarat police records were indeed present at both encounter sites. The agency officials also matched the ballistic reports of the weapons with the empty bullet shells recovered from the two encounter sites”.
“There are certain contradictions in ballistic reports. Initial findings indicate that Gujarat cops used the same weapon in the killing of Ishrat Jahan which they had used in the encounter of Jamal. The agency officials are now trying to gather more evidence in this connection”, sources said.
While Jamal was killed near Galaxy Cinema in Naroda area in Ahmedabad on January 13, 2003, Ishrat and three others — Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar — were gunned down by the Gujarat crime branch police near Kotarpur on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
The Central Bureau of Investigation sleuths are now planning to question Vanzara and former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah in this regard, sources added. Vanzara and Shah are also accused in the fake encounter of alleged gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh and in the murder of his wife Kausar Bi.
“The agency, which has so far examined more than 100 witnesses in Sadiq Jamal case, are also planning to question his family members by the end of this month”, sources said.
After the shootout, Gujarat police had claimed that Sadiq was a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba operative and he was on a mission to kill state chief minister Narendra Modi, sources said adding this claim of the state police is also being probed.