Ahmedabad:
The Gujarat High Court today asked its Special Investigation Team (SIT) to submit a final report by November 18 in connection with the Ishrat Jehan encounter case.
A division bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari observed that the investigation had, so far, not been on the right track but had made substantial progress under the new SIT chief, R R Verma. Ishrat, along with Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, was killed in a police encounter on June 15, 2004. Afterwards, the Ahmedabad crime branch claimed that the deceased were Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists who had come to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
This is the second time that the court has directed the SIT to submit its final report. During the last hearing on September 10, the SIT was asked to give its final report by October 7. However, the team had submitted an interim report saying investigation into the case was not yet over.
During the proceedings today, Mr Verma said that they wanted to conduct psycho-analysis test on some of the witnesses, who have turned hostile, and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) had given them time to conduct such a test between October 19 and 21.
Mr Verma also told the court that they had some queries regarding the CFSL report on reconstruction of the encounter.
The next hearing on the case has been slated for November 21.
During the course of the investigation, several top cops had backed out of the job to head the SIT that is probing the case. Three men served as the SIT chief before before RR Verma, Additional Director General of Police from the CISF in New Delhi, was named head of the investigations team which has three police officers as its members.
The probe in the case is being supervised directly by the Gujarat High Court which had constituted the SIT last year to investigate genuineness of the encounter after petitions filed by Ishrat's mother Shamima Kausar and Gopinath Pillai, father of Pranesh Pillai.
(With PTI inputs)
A division bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari observed that the investigation had, so far, not been on the right track but had made substantial progress under the new SIT chief, R R Verma. Ishrat, along with Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, was killed in a police encounter on June 15, 2004. Afterwards, the Ahmedabad crime branch claimed that the deceased were Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists who had come to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
This is the second time that the court has directed the SIT to submit its final report. During the last hearing on September 10, the SIT was asked to give its final report by October 7. However, the team had submitted an interim report saying investigation into the case was not yet over.
During the proceedings today, Mr Verma said that they wanted to conduct psycho-analysis test on some of the witnesses, who have turned hostile, and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) had given them time to conduct such a test between October 19 and 21.
Mr Verma also told the court that they had some queries regarding the CFSL report on reconstruction of the encounter.
The next hearing on the case has been slated for November 21.
During the course of the investigation, several top cops had backed out of the job to head the SIT that is probing the case. Three men served as the SIT chief before before RR Verma, Additional Director General of Police from the CISF in New Delhi, was named head of the investigations team which has three police officers as its members.
The probe in the case is being supervised directly by the Gujarat High Court which had constituted the SIT last year to investigate genuineness of the encounter after petitions filed by Ishrat's mother Shamima Kausar and Gopinath Pillai, father of Pranesh Pillai.
(With PTI inputs)
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