In a major relief to jailed Gujarat cops, a special CBI court on Thursday granted bail to former DIG DG Vanzara and Additional Director General of Police (ADG)
PP Pandey in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. However, the court has restricted Vanzara’s entry in Gujarat, except for marking presence before the court on first and third Saturdays of every month.
Special CBI judge KR Upadhyay has imposed various conditions on him while granting him bail and sought assurance from Vanzara to not indulge in a similar offence or tamper with evidence. He has also been ordered to be released after furnishing a personal bond of Rs2 lakh and two sureties of equal amount.
Vanzara has been in jail since 2007 in connection with Ishrat Jahan and Soharabuddin Sheikh encounter cases.
He already got bail in Soharabuddin encounter case.
The court had observed that ever since the allegations were made against Vanzara, no case of tampering evidence or influencing the witness has been reported against him.
The same court has granted bail to suspended ADG PP Pandey. With this, only one cop involved in the encounter case, NK Amin remains in jail.
The other accused cops got default bail in the year 2013 following delay in filing chargesheet by CBI.
There were 14 police officials involved in the encounter operation, but the chargesheet was filed against seven of them.
Pandey was the Joint Commissioner of Police when Mumbra-based 19-year-old college student Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were allegedly gunned down by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch sleuths on the outskirts of the city on June 15, 2004.
The Central Intelligence Bureau had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court and claimed that Ishrat and three other deceased had nexus with terrorist organisation and CBI didn’t deny these charges. The city Crime Branch dubbed all of them as lashkar-e-Tayyeba operatives who were on their mission to kill then Chief Minister Narendra Modi in order to avenge the 2002 riots.
Vanzara was deputy to Pandey in the Ahmedabad Crime Branch when the encounter had taken place. Apart from Pandey and Vanzara, CBI had chargesheeted five other cops including Gl Singhal, NK Amit, Tarun Barot, JG Parmar and Anaju Cahudhary in the same case for murder and criminal conspiracy.