Ishrat Jahan Encounter: Case against three remaining accused cops dropped

A special CBI court on Wednesday ordered to drop the case against the three remaining accused policemen including Inspector General of Police G L Singhal in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case on the ground that the Gujarat government refused to grant sanction for prosecution as required in cases of government servants facing criminal charges.

The court also held that accused policemen were "discharging their duty and there was enough evidence suggesting that Ishrat Jahan and three others, killed in the encounter, were "terrorists". The court also read out observation stating that "there is no question of fake encounter as accused policemen were acting on a sound and genuine intelligence input".

With this order, all six accused policemen, who were arrested and chargesheeted by CBI, have been let off by the special CBI court without trial. The seventh accused ex-Deputy Superintendent of Police JG Parmar was abetted after he passed away last year.

The order also means that the Gujarat High Court-monitored probe into the case, first conducted by Special Investigation Team and then CBI, will most likely be over as these orders are set to attain finality since neither CBI nor the victims' families have challenged them in a higher court. As a matter of fact, CBI has said in writing that it has accepted these orders and would not challenge them.

Read | Ishrat Jahan encounter case: Gujarat govt denies sanction to prosecute remaining accused cops

The case against four Intelligence Bureau officials, who are co-accused, is pending in the magisterial court which is also likely to be decided soon. In case their pleas are entertained, the case will come to an end for good. The accused officers have challenged summons issued to them on grounds that the Centre refused sanction to prosecute them.

On Wednesday, the CBI special judge Vipul R Raval relieved Inspector General of Police G L Singhal, ex-Deputy Superintendent of Police Tarun Barot and Assistant Sub-Inspector Anaju Chaudhary from the case. Ex-Director General of Police PP Pandey was the first accused to be discharged from the trial. The proceedings against ex IPS officer D G Vanzara and ex Superintendent of Police N K Amin were dropped for want of sanction under section 197 of code of criminal procedure (CrPC). Interestingly, the court had rejected their discharge pleas while holding that there was a prima facie case against them.

"All the police officers were to be more cautious and alert to maintain peace in the public at large. In the past, at a number of places in Ahmedabad, there were bomb blasting. Therefore, seriousness and gravity of information cannot be ignored by high-rank police officers. They are always dedicated to their duties. Looking to the material found from the Indica Car, it is
established that the information was correct, sound and there was a substantial force in the information. Therefore, these 4 persons were required to be prevented from all these aforesaid activities. It is pertinent to note that even the complainant has also found this information sound and correct," special judge Raval has observed in the order while granting relief to the accused policemen.

While rejecting their pleas, the court had asked CBI to "either obtain sanction for prosecution from the concerned authority or declare in writing the legal position as per the law, with regard to sanction for prosecution against the accused so that further trial can be held in accordance with law."

The CBI had made its stand clear since the beginning that there was no need for a sanction. But it chose to seek permission and wrote a letter to the Gujarat government. The government rejected it on the ground of "larger public interest". Subsequently, CBI submitted the letter to a special court and based on the rejection of sanction, case against Vanzara and Amin were dropped.

In case of Singhal, Barot and Chaudhary, the same "process" was followed. The court refused to entertain their discharge plea and directed the CBI "to place on record prosecution sanction as required under section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure by the concerned competent authority..., so that trial can proceed further in accordance with the law." The CBI again wrote to the state government which refused the sanction, based on which the three of them were relieved from the case.

In 2013, CBI had filed a chargesheet alleging that 19-year-old Mumbai college girl Ishrat, her friend Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai and two alleged Pakistani nationals-Zishan Johar and Amjadali Rana, were killed in a fake encounter in a "joint operation" conducted by Gujarat policemen and IB officers. The chargesheet claimed that the accused policemen had apprehended the four days before the encounter, kept them in illegal confinement and later shot them dead in cold blood. After killing them, the police branded them as "Lashkar-e-Taiba" operatives who wanted to kill the then chief minister Narendra Modi to avenge atrocities on Muslims to avenge 2002 post-Godhra riots.