Investigations into the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter of June 15, 2004 has led to reveal another conspiracy as the Gujarat police did not bother even to obtain the “call data record” (CDR) of the accused cops to verify the conversations among them during the next one year of the incident.
Sources in the agency said, “The cellular service providers retain CDR only for a period of one year as per existing guidelines. It is not available now and this valuable piece of evidence is permanently lost.” This shows the conspiracy which led to the encounter of Ishrat and three others, sources said adding that this will be mentioned in the supplementary chargesheet of the fake encounter case.
The agency sleuths have also found that the investigating officer of the Gujarat police, which initially investigated the case, had mentioned the names, aliases and addresses of the deceased in a letter to the SDM (Ahmedabad) for conducting inquest on the bodies of the deceased persons. “The IO could not have known these details before the inquest was done. This also proves that the Gujarat cops had detailed information about the deceased prior to the encounter,” sources said. This will also be mentioned in the chargesheet. Immediate-ly after the encounter, the Gujarat police had claimed that the victims were on a mission to kill the then chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi.
Besides, it has found that the Gujarat police did not even bother to send the weapons used by the accused cops in the shootout for forensic examinations for the initial five years after the incident.