In fresh trouble for the encounter-friendly Gujarat police, the special investigating team probing the Ishrat Jahan encounter has recovered some fresh evidence that counters the police’s claim that it (encounter) was genuine, and that they had fired at four suspected terrorists in self-defence.
The SIT has retrieved some photographs from a computer hard disk seized recently from the Forensic Science Laboratory here that totally rebuffs the police’s self-defence theory.
One of these pictures is of an AK-47 found near the bodies of Ishrat and three other alleged terrorists killed by the police in 2004. Surprisingly, the magazine found in the gun was clean, compared to the blood-splattered encounter spot. It gives rise to suspicion that the gun was planted after the encounter. Another photograph shows an AK-47 lying on the body of one of the deceased without a magazine. This too might indicate that the gun was planted post-encounter.
Yet another picture shows bullet injuries on the backs of the alleged terrorists. The police had claimed they had returned the terrorists’ fire. If so, their injuries would have been on the front of their bodies. “These photographs were not given by the FSL to the SIT. But now the SIT has taken hard disk of the FSL computer and retrieved the photos,” an SIT official said.
He added these photos will establish that the encounter was staged, and the alleged terrorists were in police custody when they were killed. The SIT’s Karnail Singh, when contacted, refused to comment, saying the SIT will provide all details in its report to the high court on April 5.