[1]In a major setback for the Narendra Modi government, the CBI declared on Wednesday that 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan and her three associates were killed in a “fake encounter in cold blood” in a joint operation by the Gujarat police and the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau. In a preliminary chargesheet filed before an Ahmedabad court, the CBI charged seven Gujarat police officers, including some IPS officers, for offences that include murder, conspiracy and wrongful confinement.
Those chargesheeted are additional DGP P.P. Pandey, DIG D.G. Vanzara, G.L. Singhal, Tarun Barot, N.K. Amin, J.G. Parmar and Anaju Chaudhary.
The CBI sought more time from the court to investigate the role of four officers from the Intelligence Bureau in the conspiracy. The CBI is probing the role of IB special director Rajender Kumar and three others — P. Mittal, M.K. Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede. Sources said the agency is likely to elaborate on their exact role in a supplementary chargesheet likely to be filed in the first week of August.
The CBI does not mention either the name or role of Narendra Modi or former state home minister Amit Shah in the chargesheet. Top CBI sources said the possibility of including the names of political leaders in the supplementary chargesheet cannot be ruled out.
Ishrat Jahan and 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 police claimed Ishrat and the others were Lashkar-e-Tayyaba operatives and were plotting to kill the Gujarat CM.
The CBI said it found no evidence that the four had come to kill Mr Modi. “Nothing has been found which suggests the three men and Ishrat had come to kill the chief minister,” the chargesheet notes. But it is silent on whether Ishrat was indeed a terrorist or not.
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