Nine years after Ishrat Jahan was gunned down in an alleged shoot-out by Gujarat Police, the CBI yesterday filed a charge-sheet in a court naming at least six policemen as accused. While stating that Ishrat, who lived in Thane, was not a terrorist as alleged by Gujarat Police, the charge-sheet named policemen P.P. Pande, A. Choudhary, D.G. Vanzare, Tarun Barot, J.R. Parmar and N.K. Amin among the accused.
The agency said it was not mandated to declare whether the deceased were terrorists or not, as the Gujarat high court had directed it to focus on the genuineness of the encounter after observing no one had the right to eliminate these persons even if they had been terrorists.
The charge-sheet does not name Chief Minister Narendra Modi or former home minister Amit Shah. Also, the agency has not booked IB special director Rajinder Kumar, but contended that weapons planted on the deceased were sourced from the IB office then headed by him. The probe agency accused the policemen, including Indian Police Service officers, of murder, abduction, conspiracy and destruction of evidence, among other offenses. The formal set of charges were filed by Assistant Commissioner of Police P. Rathod in a Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) special court.
Declaring that Ishrat was not a terrorist, the CBI said that three others killed in the same alleged shootout June 15, 2004 were suspected of terror links. Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh, Amjad ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, who were killed in the incident in addition to Ishrat, were allegedly planning terror attacks in Ahmedabad.
The CBI said Pillai was allegedly using Ishrat, a collegian in Mumbai, hailing from Mumbra town of Thane, as a shield to cover his activities. Contrary to expectations, no politicians have been named in the charge sheet and the CBI plans to file a supplementary document within a month in the case.
Ishrat was not a terrorist: CBI
