A special CBI court on Tuesday rejected the discharge applications of former police officers D.G. Vanzara and N.K. Amin in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case.
The two had sought discharge on the ground of lack of evidence.
The Central Bureau of Investigation had filed charge sheets in the case against officials of the Gujarat police and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), including the then Special Director of the Bureau, Rajinder Kumar. Retired Superintendent of Police N.K. Amin is a co-accused.
The court had concluded the hearing of arguments of the two police officers and Ishrat Jahan’s mother, Shamima Kauser, who had challenged Mr. Vanzara’s discharge plea arguing that he had been directly involved from the planning stage to the execution of the staged killings.
Mr. Vanzara had sought parity with the State’s former Director-General of Police P.P. Pandey, who was discharged in February for want of evidence.
Former SP’s plea
Mr. Amin, who retired as a Superintendent of Police, argued that the encounter was genuine and that the testimonies of witnesses produced by the Central Bureau of Investigation were not reliable.
He alleged that the CBI probe was motivated and evidences were fabricated.
Nineteen-year-old Ishrat Jahan from the Mumbra area near Mumbai and three others — Javed Shaikh, alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar — were killed by a joint team of the police and officials of the IB in an encounter in 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
After the encounter, the police had claimed that the four were associated with Pakistan-based terror outfit LeT and were plotting to kill the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
