A CBI court today will hand over copies of the chargesheet filed earlier this month in the
Ishrat Jahan encounter case. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had, in the chargesheet, said that 19-year-old Ishrat, a college student, was shot dead in "cold blood" along with three others in a staged encounter in 2004, executed in a joint operation by Gujarat Police and the Intelligence Bureau.
Seven policemen from the Gujarat Crime Branch - including suspended IPS officer DG Vanzara who is in jail and then crime branch chief PP Pande, who is absconding - have been charged with murder, conspiracy and destruction of evidence, abduction and other sections of the Arms Act. The CBI has told the court that the accused should be personally present when the chargesheets are given today.
The agency, in its chargesheet, has also said that it suspects the involvement of senior intel officer Rajendra Kumar, whose role and that of others in the IB, it said, needs to be investigated further. Mr Kumar was the Gujarat station chief of the IB when Ishrat and the others - Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai and two Pakistani nationals Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar - were shot dead outside Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004; the policemen involved said they had received alerts from the IB that the group planned to assassinate Chief Minister
Narendra Modi on behalf of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Mr Kumar's interrogation by the CBI has created a sharp divide between his agency and the latter, which is expected to name him as an accused in its next chargesheet, to be filed most likely after he retires at the end of July.
The IB official has said that though he shared information with the police about the possibility of Ishrat and the others being terrorists, he did not sanction the encounter. The CBI, however, says it has testimony from eyewitnesses and other evidence that will later show how Mr Kumar played a key role in the killings and in what it calls a larger conspiracy.