In what could eventually lead to the closure of the Ishrat Jehan encounter case, the Union Home Ministry on Monday turned down the CBI’s request for granting sanction for prosecution against four IB officials, including retired Special Director Rajender Kumar. The CBI had sought prosecution sanction during the UPA Government.
The denial means the charges against the four intelligence officials cannot be framed and the court will not take cognizance, thereby leading to the possibility of bringing the curtains down on the case that has haunted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah for the past 11 years. The Home Ministry, after going through the documents carefully submitted by the CBI, rejected the agency’s plea, official sources said but did not elaborate the grounds on which the sanction has been turned down.
Since mid-2013, the CBI had been pursuing the matter of sanction for prosecuting the IB officers from MHA, alleging their involvement in the conspiracy behind the killing of Ishrat. CBI Director Ranjit Sinha and Special Director Saleem Ali invited severe objections from the IB for making their officers accused in a counter-intelligence operation on Ishrat and three other members belonging to the leT module that was to target Modi (then the Gujarat CM) in 2004.
The CBI had submitted its final report in the case to the Home Ministry, which is the cadre controlling ministry for IB personnel, two years ago. Former IB Director Asif Ibrahim had opposed the move to prosecute his officers during his tenure which ended in December last year. Kumar, an IPS officer of 1979 batch, who retired about two years ago, was posted as joint director of IB in Ahmedabad when the Ishrat encounter took place. Of the other three members eliminated in the encounter, two were from Pakistan.
The former IB officer was questioned by the CBI twice regarding his alleged role in the conspiracy to carry out the encounter. During UPA’s tenure, CBI top officials had maintained that they had evidence that Kumar was one of the officers who had interrogated Ishrat when she was allegedly taken into illegal custody by Gujarat Police before being killed in the encounter.
The CBI charged the retired IPS officer for generating intelligence input that a group of lashkar terrorists were coming to Ahmedabad to target then Gujarat CM Modi. Kumar was questioned at length and he had accused the Congress of playing politics on security and intelligence related matters. The IB officer had accused Sinha and Ali for manipulating the case against him upon the instructions of political bosses. Several security experts, including former Home Secretary GK Pillai reiterated that Ishrat was part of the leT module. The leT had uploaded her photo on their website as martyr. Almost all accused in the case got bail from the court.
IPS officers DG Vanzara and P P Pandey were granted bail in February. NK Amin, another accused, was reinstated by the Gujarat Home Department as Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) in the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) at Gandhinagar early this month. In the encounter, Ishrat, her friend Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh along with two suspected Pakistanis - Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar - were gunned down by Gujarat crime branch officials.
The crime branch had then claimed that the four of them were leT operatives who had reached Gujarat to kill the then CM Modi. The CBI probe got momentum in mid-2013 and the BJP alleged that this was an attempt to block Modi, who had emerged as next Prime Ministerial choice of the BJP. Also, the BJP had accused the Congress for maligning Modi and Shah for foisting false cases by demoralising the security intelligence officials.