Special CBI court rejected jailed Gujarat police officer NK Amin’s bail application on Tuesday. Amin is one of the seven Gujarat cops, who were termed accused in the alleged fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others by the CBI.
The suspended Deputy Superintendent of Police had filed default bail plea before the additional chief judicial magistrate SH Khutwad. Amin wanted bail on the ground that the CBI had filed ‘incomplete’ chargesheet in the Ishrat encounter case.
“According to Section 167(2) of CrPC, the default bail plea has to be filed after 90 days and that too, in case the chargesheet is not filed. The investigation agency failed to file the chargesheet within the stipulated period of 90 days of Amin’s arrest,” argued Amin’s advocate.
In the counter argument, the CBI counsel said that the chragesheet was filed one day before the stipulated period and court had accepted it. Hearing arguments of both the parties court observed that the chargesheet was filed within 90 days and hence Amin’s advocate’s argument of incomplete chargesheet didn’t survive.
Amin and another DySP Tarun Barot abducted 19-year-old Jahan and her associate Javed Shekh alias Pranesh Pillai from a toll booth in Anand district two days prior to their killing on June 15, 2004 near Ahmedabad, states the chargesheet filed by the CBI. It also described that Amin also accused of firing shots at Ishrat, Javed and two alleged Pakistani nationals Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana. All four were killed by Ahmedabad Crime Branch in what CBI claimed was a staged shootout.
The CBI arrested Amin on April 4 after his release on bail in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh encounter case. In the same case, five other policemen, who were termed accused in the chargesheet that include Gl Singhal, Tarun Barot, JG Parmar, Bharat Patel and Anaju Chaudhary — were granted default bail as the CBI failed to file chargesheet within 90 days of their respective arrest.