Hitting out at the Gujarat government for “hampering the probe in the Ishrat encounter case,” a division bench of Gujarat high court said told the state not to compel it to hand over the probe to a Central agency like the CBI or NIA in the controversial encounter case.
During hearing on the progress report of the SIT which is probing the case, Justice Jayant Patel of the division bench warned the state authorities to see that the SIT is allowed to probe without restraint.
The division bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari had some strong words to say against the government for its approach and said the government’s approach and stand was that the SIT doesn’t function, or if it does, then in a paralysed manner.
The Gujarat high court told advocate general Kamal Trivedi that despite oral instructions by the bench, the state is yet to transfer three police officials — P.P. Pande, G.L. Singhal and Tarun Barot — who were involved in the encounter and are now trying to influence the probe by the SIT.
The court said a member of the SIT, Satish Verma, who tried to carry out the probe on clues gathered by him, was served with a complaint against him by another member of the SIT, Mohan Jha. The court took the view that the said instance, coupled with non-transfer of the three police officers who may influence the investigation, non availability of the chairman of SIT and his relieving order by the state, and other instances, leads the court to believe that the “attitude” of the state is not proper.
Raising questions on non-transfer of three police officials, though the Special Investigation Team found them to be influencing in the case, the court said, despite the court’s earlier oral directions it has not been done.
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AP mantri slaps his assistant
age CORRESPONDENT
BOBBILI (VIZIANAGARAM)
April 8: In a shocking behaviour the minister for small-scale industries, handlooms and textiles, Mr P. Shankar Rao, on Friday slapped his personal assistant, Mr Venkatesh, when the latter failed to act on the minister’s instruction to take a phone call when the phone rang during a meeting at the Industrial Growth Centre. The minister threw the phone at Mr Venkatesh and slapped him when he failed to catch it.
Mr Rao held an emergency press conference at the R&B Bungalow to deny the allegations. He said he had not slapped anyone during the meeting and it was some television channels that were unnecessarily playing up the issue.
However, irate government officials demanded that the minister apologise to Mr Venkatesh.