After the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter of 2005 — which the State CID (Crime) had found to be “fake” — and the Central Bureau of Investigation concluding that the killing of Sohrabuddin's accomplice, Tulsiram Prajapati, a year later was also a fake encounter, the Ishrat Jahan murder case will add further embarrassment to the Narendra Modi government in the State.
For the moment, the key issue is who will investigate the murder case that the Gujarat High Court ordered to be filed in the June 2004 killing of Ishrat, Pranesh Pillai aka Javed Sheikh and two others? During the hearing on the issue on Monday, the advocates of both Gopinathan Pillai, father of Javed Sheikh aka Pranesh Pillai, and Shamima Kausar, mother of Ishrat Jahan, wanted the same Special Investigation Team to continue with the fresh investigation, while State Advocate General Kamal Trivedi wanted the investigation to be handed over to the police, “particularly because two of the present SIT members, Mohan Jha and Satish Verma are from the State IPS cadre.”
The SIT itself, however, showed reluctance to continue with the investigation and wanted some other agency to take over the responsibility. After talking among themselves, Mr. Verma informed the court that he and Mr. Jha were unwilling to continue and were in favour of some other agency taking over the investigation while Mr. Satish Verma was agreeable to the suggestion that the same SIT could hold a fresh investigation into the entire episode.
The court said, “The probe agency would need to find out who played the key role in the encounter, what was the motive and what was the actual time of the death of the four people.”
The probe in the sensational case was supervised directly by the Gujarat High Court which had constituted the SIT last year to investigate the genuineness of the encounter after petitions demanding CBI investigation into the encounter killing of the four were filed separately by Ms. Kausar and Mr. Pillai.
Among the 21 policemen allegedly involved in the Ishrat killing were the suspended Deputy Inspector General of Police D.G. Vanzara, nicknamed “encounter specialist,” the then Joint Police Commissioner (Crime Branch) P.P. Pande, the then Assistant Commissioner of Police, G.L. Singhal and another ACP Narendra Amin, all IPS officers. Incidentally, both Mr. Vanzara and Dr. Amin are already in jail in connection with the Sohrabuddin fake encounter and killing of his wife Kausarbi, while the then Minister of State for Home Amit Shah, who the CBI believed was the “master mind” in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter, was out on bail but was directed by the Supreme Court to stay out of Gujarat till his bail application was disposed of by it.
State BJP spokesman Vijay Rupani, while declining to comment on the High Court order, said it was shocking that the Congress was “helping and supporting” terrorist and terror organisations “only for the sake of Muslim vote bank.”
While the State government refused to react on the High Court's decision, State Congress president Arjun Modhwadia alleged that not only the Ishrat Jahan, all the “encounters” during Mr. Modi's tenure in the name of “fighting against terrorism” were fake ones and more shocking revelations would come in the coming days when investigation into other encounters was initiated. Petitions demanding fresh investigation into the alleged encounter death of Sadiq Jamal Mehtar in 2003 and several others were also pending before the High Court.
