Ishrat Jahan Fake Encounter: CBI Court Contradicts SIT’s Conclusion, Discharges 3 Accused Policemen

A Special CBI court in Ahmedabad has discharged three accused policemen in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan Encounter case. With this discharge order, all six accused policemen who were initially arrested and charged-sheeted by the CBI in relation to the alleged fake encounter case have been let off by the special CBI court without trial.

The CBI special judge Vipul R. Raval discharged IPS officer GL Singhal, retired cop Tarun Barot and SRPF commando Anaju Chaudhari. Former IG DG Vanzara, PP Pandey, and NK Amin were discharged earlier.

A high court-appointed Special Investigation Team had previously concluded that the encounter was fake, after which the CBI proceeded to register a case against various police officials.

However, the CBI court’s order stressed that there was no question of any fake encounter on the part of any police officer. It noted that based on the intelligence input, the Gujarat Police was required to keep watch and supervision on the movement and activities of the 4 persons, who were later killed in the encounter.

“The act which is alleged to have been done by the accused was in discharge of their duties or purported to be in discharge of their duties,” the court said.

“There is nothing on record even prima facie to suggest that the victims were not terrorists, the I.B. inputs were not genuine,” it added. 

Ishrat Jahan Encounter

In June 2004, the Gujarat police, in an encounter, shot dead 19-year-old student Ishrat Jahan along with three other people- Javed Shaikh, Amjad Ali Akbarali Rana, and Zeeshan Johar on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Her mother said Ishrat was the victim of a “fake encounter”. The police, led by Vanzara, who was the Deputy Commissioner at the time alleged that Ishrat and the others were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, who were on a mission to kill Narendra Modi.

However, a special investigation team set up by the High Court had found the encounter to be fake. 

After Vanzara’s arrest in 2007, for his role in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, his other killings also came to light. There was Samir Khan, killed in Usmanpura, Ahmedabad in 2002. Sadik Jamal of Bhavnagar, killed in 2003. In December 2006, Tulsi Prajapati who was said to be a witness in the Sohrabuddin case was also killed in an encounter in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. Vanzara was allegedly involved in all the killings, and each time he described the people killed as terrorists out to kill Modi.