Ishrat Jehan, who was killed along with three men by Gujarat cops in 2004
The CBI has reportedly decided that Rajinder Kumar, who headed the Intelligence Bureau in Gujarat, will be charged with the murder of Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old college student who was killed with three men in 2005 by the state police's most senior officers, who claimed the group was planning to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The move will aggravate the conflict the case has created between the CBI and the Intelligence Bureau.
Mr Kumar, who retired from the Intelligence Bureau in July, is expected to feature in the CBI's second chargesheet to be filed in court soon. In its first chargesheet filed in July, the agency accused seven police officers of the alleged murders.
The CBI has said that Ishrat and the others were killed "in cold blood" by the Gujarat police and the Intelligence Bureau.
The Intelligence Bureau has said that though it alerted the Gujarat police to the possibility that the group was affiliated to the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, its officers did not authorize or participate in the extra-judicial killing. CBI sources allege that Mr Kumar provided an AK-56 that was planted at the scene of the fake encounter to make it seem like the killed quartet were heavily armed and dangerous.
Like the first chargesheet, the new one does not refer to whether Ishrat and the men killed with her had terrorist links.
The Intelligence Bureau has warned the government that interrogating or implicating its agents will dissuade officers and their sources from passing on information that could be key for national security.
The new chargesheet does not mention Amit Shah, who is a close aide of Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister who is now running for Prime Minister. In a letter to Mr Modi, one of the cops charged with Ishrat's murder had said that the police encounter was sanctioned by Mr Shah, who was then Home Minister of Gujarat.