The CBI will not name Special Director of Intelligence Bureau (IB) Rajendra Kumar in its first charge sheet on July 4 and will seek more time from the court to probe the conspiracy angle in the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and others.
This comes amid a major face-off between the Intelligence Bureau and the CBI over the latter’s attempts to implicate such a high ranking IB officer in the encounter case.
“We have promised the Gujarat HC 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 Director Ranjit Sinha told reporters on the sidelines of an Interpol conference.
The case is being probed by the CBI at the behest of Gujarat High Court in connection with the alleged fake encounter of four lashkar-e-Taiba operatives including 19-year-old Ishrat from Mumbra.
The agency has enlisted one of the accused as an approver in the case on whose claims the CBI sources had earlier indicated that the 1979-batch officer would be chargesheeted. The CBI has so far failed to gather substantive evidence of criminality against the IB officer in the encounter case and it will seek more time from the court under relevant sections of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to probe the conspiracy angle in the case.
Kumar was posted as Joint Director of Gujarat unit of IB when the State police liquidated the leT terrorists following inputs from the Central Intelligence agency.
The CBI move to drop the name of Kumar from the charge sheet comes after the Union Home Ministry told the agency that the Centre has enough evidence to suggest that the liquidated people owed allegiance to leT and that the IB official had no role beyond passing on precise Intelligence inputs on the movement of the leT operatives. The Ministry also asserted that the CBI would require its sanction to prosecute the senior IPS officer. The Union Home Ministry is the cadre-controlling authority of the IPS officers.
The sources said Kumar’s role was being further probed in the case and that he may be called for questioning again. Kumar, who is an expert on Pakistan, is slated to retire on July 31.
Meanwhile, the CBI has urged the Union Home Ministry and the Maharashtra Government to provide adequate security to the Chief Investigating Officer in the Ishrat encounter case following reports of threat to him.
CBI’s Superintendent of Police, Sandeep Madhukar Tamgadge, an IPS officer of the 2001 batch from Nagaland cadre has reportedly been receiving threats. The CBI Director said: “We have asked the Home Ministry and Maharashtra Government to provide security to our officers probing the case.” While Sinha refused to divulge further details of the investigation and the contents of the charge sheet, agency sources said policemen who had carried out the encounter would be named in the preliminary final report.
Kumar is considered a thorough professional but has been questioned by the agency twice in connection with the case and was issued summons as an accused.