By TCN Special Correspondent,
Ahmedabad: Fearing their arrest in the Ishrat Jahan and Javed Pillai encounter case, 14 police officers, including IPS officer G L Singhal, on Tuesday moved the Gujarat High Court seeking transfer of the probe to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or some other central agency.
The probe into 2004 encounter case in which four persons were killed, is at present being conducted by a special investigation team (SIT) comprising Gujarat police officials set up on the order of the Gujarat high court.
The police officials had filed an urgent appeal before the bench of Justice Jayant Patel and Justice Abhilasha Kumari but the bench refused to treat it as urgent and listed it for hearing on May 4.
It is for the first time that the Gujarat police officials themselves have expressed lack of faith in its own colleagues and expressed apprehensions that the Gujarat police official conducting the probe was biased.
They alleged in their petition that senior IPS official Satish Verma, who has been given full charge of investigation into the encounter case by the high court, was working in connivance with certain IPS officers having personal score to settle with them.
Verma was handed over the full charge after his seniors in the SIT tried to prevent him from investigating the case by getting complaints registered against him. The complainants from the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) had alleged that Verma had misbehaved and threatened them while raiding their offices to collect CDs and other documents containing photographs of the scene of encounter. The photos reportedly go to prove that it was not an encounter but a cold-blooded murder.
The complainants alleged that Verma might use ‘coercive’ steps against them and ‘extra-legal’ methods to implicate them in the case.
Ishrat Jahan, Javed Pillai and two others were shot dead on the outskirts of Ahmedabad city in 2004 and police officials involved had described the incident as an encounter. They were alleged to be Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives on a mission to kill chief minister Narendra Modi, VHP lerader Pravin Togadia and senior BJP leader L K Advani.
Though the case was closed by the cops without further investigation, it was probed later on by magistrate SP Tamang one and a half years ago. Magistrate Tamang had found that it was a cold blooded murder and not encounter.
But Tamang’s investigation was challenged by the Gujarat government and it was stayed by an order of the high court.
But Ishrat’s mother Shamima Kausar and Javed’s father Gopinath Pilai moved the Supreme Court. On Apex court’s order, Gujarat high court heard the case and set up the SIT to probe the case afresh.
The cops who have moved the high court are:
G L Singhal( IPS), K M Vaghela, R I Patel, Tarun Barot-all deputy superintendent of police, J G Parmar (retired DySP), H Goswami , B A Chavda, K S Desai , C J Goswami -all police inspectors, M T Vyas and N B Saiyyed, M N Menat ,B R Bharwad and A J Chowdhary-all constables.