CBI will file the first charge sheet in the Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter case in a designated court in Ahmedabad on Wednesday and will submit a status report on the investigations before the Gujarat High Court the next day.
Apart from chargesheeting the Gujarat police officials related to the encounter, the charge sheet is likely to rely on the SIT report which had said that the viscera test report of the Mumbra girl suggested that she was killed 24 hours before the encounter on July 15, 2004. To buttress the conspiracy theory behind the encounter, the CBI is likely to cite the test report as an evidence even as the agency will seek more time from the court to unravel the criminal conspiracy behind the alleged fake encounter.
In its charge sheet, the agency is likely to suggest that the liquidated persons were lashkar operatives but the encounter was not genuine, the sources said.
The sources said, the charge sheet will not name Intelligence Bureau Special Director Rajendra Kumar or any State politician as accused in the preliminary final report, the agency is likely to mention Kumar’s name in the chargesheet as he had questioned lashkar-e-Tayyaba operatives Ishrat and three others who were subsequently eliminated by the Gujarat Crime Branch.
The agency will seek more time from the designated court to probe the wider conspiracy behind the incident.
Besides 19-year old Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were neutralised in the encounter near Ahmedabad by a team of Crime Branch officials on June 15, 2004. CBI Director Ranjit Sinha had on Monday said, “We have promised the Gujarat High Court that we will file a charge sheet on July 4 in this case and we will maintain our time limit. We will file a preliminary charge sheet.”
CBI is probing the case on the directions of the Gujarat High Court and had earlier indicated that 1979-batch IPS officer Kumar had a role in the conspiracy. However, the Union Home Ministry intervened to end the spat between the IB and the CBI over latter’s move to implicate the senior intelligence official who is considered a thorough professional and an expert on Pakistan. Kumar was Joint Director of Gujrat unit of IB and had passed on precise intelligence input on the movement of the lashkar terrorists. CBI sources said Kumar’s alleged role is still under scrutiny.
Meanwhile, a CNN IBN report claimed that Jammu and Kashmir Police had informed Gujarat Police that they had arrested three terrorists who allegedly had teamed up with Amjad Ali, who was killed in an encounter along with Ishrat, to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi in 2004. The report claimed that ACP Parixita Rathod, investigating officer in the Ishrat Jehan encounter case, filed an affidavit before the POTA court in Gujarat.
Rathod had stated that Jammu and Kashmir Police had informed the Gujarat Police of arresting three terrorists in 2004 in Srinagar, allegedly involved in a plot to kill Modi. The affidavit further said that Gujarat police officer ACP Dr NK Amin, already under arrest in the Ishrat case, even interrogated the terrorists in Srinagar jail.
According to the affidavit, the terrorists admitted that they had teamed up with Amjad Ali to kill Gujarat Chief Minister. The Jammu and Kashmir Police refused to hand over the terrorists to Gujarat Police despite the State getting transfer orders from the POTA court in Gujarat, the affidavit added.