By IANS,
Gandhinagar : Three senior Gujarat Police officers, whose names figured in the Ishrat Jahan alleged staged killing case, were transferred Tuesday on the high court’s orders to prevent them influencing the investigation.
Additional Director General of Police P.P. Pandey, Superintendent of Police G.L. Singhal and Deputy Superintendent Tarun Barot were all with the Ahmedabad Crime Branch in 2004, when Ishrat and three others were gunned down.
The transfer came two days after the high court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) reconstructed the scene with active involvement of experts drawn from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Barot and Singhal had actually demonstrated how the gunfight was carried out. Two other officers with a role in the matter – Deputy Inspector General of Police D.G. Vanzara and Superintendent of Police N.K. Amin – were not present as they are behind bars in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh staged shoot-out case.
The high court had only recently rapped the state government for not transferring the senior officers despite its clear orders.
Ishrat, Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. Police had claimed that the group had allegiance to Lashkar-e-Taiba and had come to Ahmedabad with the intention to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Both Ishrat’s mother and Javed’s father had moved court alleging that their children were killed in a fake gunfight.