By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Ahmedabad: In a fresh attempt to get bail before the CBI judge K R Upadhyaya, Gujarat IPS officer D G Vanzara has taken a stand that he simply followed his superiors’ orders while executing the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter and questioned why the CBI has not made the then police commissioner K R Kaushik and IB officials as accused in the case.
Vanzara’s counsel V Gajjar argued on Friday that he was not aware about IB’s inputs and he only acted for the operation on the orders of his superior Kaushik, but the CBI, instead of booking the latter too, made him a witness thereby selectively sparing him while booking the subordinate officers.
File photo of D G Vanzara (Courtesy: Outlook India)
He also argued that CBI did not make four IB officials linked to the case viz. Rajendra Kumar, Tarun Mittal, M K Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede as accused giving reason that CBI did not receive sanction from the Union Home Ministry – as required under Section 197 of CrPC for prosecution against the IB officers – where as CBI did not opt for any such permission before naming Vanzara or any other senior Gujarat Police officer in the charge sheet.
Section 197 of Criminal Procedure Code of India provides that no public servant can be prosecuted for an alleged offence committed during discharge of official duty without the government’s nod.
Besides Kaushik, Gajjar criticized Gujarat IPS officer Satish Verma who had conducted an inquiry into the encounter on the orders of the Gujarat High Court and dragged his name in the case alleging that Verma wanted names of some politicians from him and since he refused to provide, he was made an accused in the case.“Those who cooperated are out on bail,” Adv Gajjar told the court.
Verma had assisted CBI investigation that charge sheeted seven accused, including Vanzara, additional director general of police (ADGP) P P Pandey, IPS officer G L Singhal among others for the alleged Ishrat Jahan and three others’ encounter in 2004.
Next hearing over the bail application has been kept for December 5 by the CBI court.
Ishrat Jahan, a resident of Thane near Mumbai, and three others – Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai; Amjad Ali Rana and Zishan Johar – were killed on June 15, 2004 by crime branch personnel on the outskirts of Ahmedabad city alleging to be Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives out on a mission to kill then chief minister Narendra Modi.
However, after the probe, CBI concluded that the encounter was “fake” and carried out jointly by Gujarat Police and IB. Besides Vanzara, over a dozen policemen, including IPS officers, were charged with murder and criminal conspiracy.
Meanwhile, well-informed sources in the Gujarat government have told Counterview that “all-out efforts are on” to ensure that cops involved in the fake encounter cases are released on bail one after another.
The reason, said the sources, is that they could be “quite effective” in helping “influence” and “work through” the prosecution to ensure that the cases begin losing its importance and fall through.
A senior official requesting anonymity, had told Counterview, “No stone is being left unturned to see to it that the cases become weak.” He added, if so far three officers have been freed – with two of them given plum posts – days are not far when “others may follow suit.”
“A senior bureaucrat in the chief minister’s office is taking special interest in this,” sources pointed out, adding, “There are clear political reasons behind this. National president of the BJP Amit Shah is one of the prime accused in the case, and is currently on bail. One has only to remember as to why the Supreme Court shifted the Sohrabuddin case out of Gujarat and, for quite some time, even debarred him from Gujarat.”
So far, the high profile accused in the case and IPS officers – Abhay Chudasama, G L Singhal and Vipul Agarwal – have been released on bail with the orders of Bombay High Court. All these are reinstated on plum posts immediately after their release from prison by the Gujarat government, a move criticized by the legal experts and social activists.
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Former Gujarat top cop D.G.Vanzara gets bail in fake encounter case