By IANS,
Ahmedabad : The Gujarat High Court Thursday ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the killing of Sadiq Jamal Mehtar, an alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant, in a 2003 shootout with the state police.
The investigative agency was given the directive by a single judge bench of Justice M.R. Shah.
Mehtar was killed in the early hours of January 13, 2003, near Galaxy Cinema in Ahmedabad city by broadly the same band of policemen of the Ahmedabad Crime Branch which is now in the dock for the alleged staged shootout of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife as well as Ishrat Jahan and three others.
This is the third suspected staged encounter case to be handed over to the CBI. The first case was the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauserbi, followed by that of his associate and key eyewitness Tulsi Prajapati.
The investigation of the killing of Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan and three others has already been handed over to the special investigation team (SIT) set up by the Gujarat High Court.
Justice Shah rejected the Gujarat government’s plea that the Mehtar case be handed over to a special task force (STF) constituted by it. An independent investigation was essential as senior police officers were implicated in the case, the court ruled.
The court also dismissed the state government’s plea that a seven-year delay in filing an appeal by the brother of Mehtar created issues of credibility. Crime never dies, the court said.
Mehtar was projected by the police to be an operative of Lashkar-e-Taiba on a mission to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia.
However, questions over the killing surfaced in 2003 itself when Mumbai-based journalist Ketan Tirodkar told a court that Mehtar was killed in a staged shootout.