An Ahmedabad-based forum, Jan Sangarsh Manch (JSM), has come out with an analysis of call data records (CDRs) of police officers accused in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case indicating that the then Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, was in touch with the accused. Mr. Shah is on bail at present in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.
Lawyer Mukul Sinha, who is also the chairman of JSM, said in Ahmedabad on Saturday that of the CDRs of eight accused persons, the Manch was able to analyse the records of three persons.
Mr. Sinha is the lawyer for the father of Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh, who was killed along with Ishrat and two others by the Gujarat police on June 15, 2004, in the encounter that the CBI has recently termed ‘fake’.
It took four days for Nirjhari Sinha, member of JSM, to analyse the call records of D.G Vanzara, P.P Pandey and N.K Amin. Mr. Pandey is still absconding. Mr. Sinha alleged that the phone calls between Mr. Vanzara and Mr. Shah clearly suggest that the Minister was directly involved in the case. According to their analysis of the phone records, Mr. Shah and Mr. Vanzara spoke late night on June 14, 2004 and also after the encounter.
Mr. Sinha asserted that the manner in which Rajinder Kumar, the then Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau head and other officers had called one another, indicated that Mr. Kumar’s role was not limited to providing intelligence inputs but that he was involved in the conspiracy.
