In a vindication of the officers of the Gujarat police, a special CBI court in Ahmedabad on Wednesday (31 March) dropped proceedings against three police officers accused of the extrajudicial killing of Ishrat Jahan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, and two others in June 2004.
Indian Police Service (IPS) officer GL Singhal, retired police officer Tarun Barot, and Anaju Chaudhari were acquitted by the court and the trial has now come to an end, unless the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) appeals against the same.
Previously, the CBI had not filed an appeal against four other officers earlier. According to the special CBI judge VR Raval, “prima facie, there was nothing on record to suggest” that Ishrat Jahan and the four others who were killed “were not terrorists.”
Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar − believed to be Pakistani nationals − were killed near Kotarpur waterworks on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004, by the Ahmedabad City Detection of Crime Branch, then led by former Deputy Inspector-General of Police D G Vanzara. DCB had then claimed that the four were operatives of the Lashkar-e-Taiba out to kill the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
In its charge sheet filed in 2013, the CBI had named seven police officers – P P Pandey, D G Vanzara, N K Amin, J G Parmar, Singhal, Barot, and Chaudhary — as accused in the case. All the accused were charged with murder, abduction, and destruction of evidence among other charges.
The court noted, “The order is passed with the application of mind and Government has also come to the conclusion that the offences committed by the present applicants are such which have been committed while discharging their official duties as police officers and also the investigation against the accused is not proper and there is no evidence against the accused.”
The Ishrat Jehan encounter, which was called an extrajudicial killing, was greatly politicised by the Congress Party and the Left. The court also said that there was no question of any fake encounter on the part of any such police officer and these high ranking police officers have performed their duty.
On June 15, 2004, Ishrat Jahan, along with Javed Shaikh, Amjad Ali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, were killed in a shootout by the Gujarat police. According to the police, all four were terrorists, who had plans to assassinate the then Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, and had links to the banned Islamic terror outfit Lashkar e Taiba (LeT) which eventually carried out the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
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