After the Intelligence Bureau officials, the CBI is set to probe the role of Union Home Ministry officials also in filing affidavit before the Gujarat High Court in 2007 claiming that the Ishrat Jahan encounter was genuine.
Sources said the Home Ministry officials’ role in preparing the second affidavit in 2009, which reiterated that Ishrat and other three were terrorists but was silent on the encounter part, would also come under CBI radar.
“We will probe the motive and basis of filing the first affidavit by MHA. We have to find who were all behind in the preparation of the affidavit, which termed the encounter a genuine one. We will also probe, why the stand was changed in the second affidavit,” said a CBI source.
Maintaining that Ishrat, Javed Sheikh and two Pakistani citizens Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali were leT operatives and part of the terror module, Union Home Ministry’s second affidavit maintained silence on its earlier version on the matters related to encounter.
MHA in its second affidavit specifically mentioned about the Intelligence Bureau’s various inputs on leT’s plans to eliminate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The CBI sources also indicated that they will soon name IB officials Rajinder Kumar, and Rajeev Wankhede in the supplementary chargesheet as accused. “We have to give a status report to court by July 26. We are connecting loose ends to fix the role of the IB officials in the conspiracy,” said sources.
“As it is a case of criminal nature, we don’t need any sort of sanction against any officials,” added sources. Meanwhile, MHA officials maintained that the CBI does not have enough evidence to prosecute IB officer Kumar in the alleged fake encounter case and it was unlikely to give sanction to CBI to prosecute the senior IPS officer.
However, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Thursday said those guilty of carrying out alleged fake encounter should be punished. “Facts are facts. Guilty should be punished,” Shinde told media in the morning when asked to comment on CBI’s submission to the court.
Gujarat Crime Branch officials had allegedly fired 70 rounds using their automatic and semi-automatic weapons at Ishrat Jahan and three others during the alleged fake encounter nine years ago.
Agency sources said two officers of the team which executed the encounter — IK Chauhan and Commando Mohan Nanji — had refused to fire upon four victims following which accused Mohan Kalasawa and Tarun Barot forcibly snatched their weapons and shot the victims dead. The duo has been made eyewitnesses in the case.
Accused police officials NK Amin, JG Parmar, Tarun Barot, Mohan Kalasawa and Anaju Jiman Choudhary were allegedly involved in the shooting in which Ishrat and three others were killed. The chargesheet details the break of the shots fired upon by the accused policemen. Kalashwa who has since died fired the maximum number of shots from an AK-56 rifle procured from Gujarat SIB.