HC grants Ishrat case to Godhra SIT

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Thursday transferred the investigation into the Ishrat Jahan encounter case to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court to probe Godhra riots cases.

Ishrat, a 19-year-old girl from Mumbra (a distant northern suburb of Mumbai); Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai from Pune; Amjad Ali Rana; and Zeeshan Johar from Pakistan, were killed in an encounter on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The city crime branch that carried out the operation claimed that all four were fidayeen of Lashkar-e-Taiba and were on a mission to kill chief minister Narendra Modi. However, the parents of Ishrat and Javed questioned the accusation and sought a CBI probe. The high court last year formed a three-member team of IPS officers to probe the case.
This team was dissolved by a Bench of justice Jayant Patel and justice Abhilasha Kumari, which asked the SIT — headed by a former CBI director, RK Raghavan — to submit its investigation report to the high court within three months. The high court has also made it clear that the SIT would not take any assistance from Gujarat officers, who are involved directly or indirectly in the encounter. In handing over the probe to SIT, the court has observed that this would instil confidence and credibility into the investigation.
The high court also pulled up the state government for siding with police officers who are actually facing charges of faking an encounter. Also, the government challenged metropolitan magistrate SP Tamang’s inquiry report into the encounter.
The high court has raised doubts on inferences drawn by Tamang in his report about the manner the four might have been killed. But the judges held that his could be just another view, which differed from the view taken by earlier investigators — crime branch ACP Parixita Gurjar and then CID (crime) head J Mahapatra. But the high court has made it clear that the report has got recommendatory value and if a state government disagrees with it, the objection to lodging of an FIR in this regard would be subject to judicial review.