By IANS,
Gandhinagar: In the 2004 Ishrat Jahan shootout case, the Gujarat High Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) was Thursday given access to a magisterial report which is believed to have concluded that the incident was a cold-blooded murder.
A division bench of the court allowed the SIT access to Metropolitan Magistrate S.P. Tamang’s report which is kept with it in a sealed cover.
V.R. Toliya, assistant commissioner of police, who is assisting the SIT, moved an application before the high court seeking to acquire a copy of the magistrate’s report.
The bench comprising Justice Jayant Patel and Justice Abhilasha Kumari allowed the plea stating: “When the SIT appointed by us is going to investigate the case, giving a certified copy of the magistrate’s report should not be a problem.”
Tamang, who held a judicial inquiry into the incident, concluded that it was a staged shootout.
Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan, Javed alias Pranesh Pillai, Jissan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana were killed in a shootout by police June,15, 2004.
The Gujarat police claimed that the slain people were attached to terror organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
SIT member Satish Verma and his team, including Toliya, recently raided a forensic science laboratory in Gandhinagar and recovered documents and a computer hard disk related to the shootout.