File picture of Ishrat Jehan
Suspended senior IPS officer GL Singhal and three other policemen have been granted bail in the Ishrat Jehan fake encounter case by a CBI court. Encounter specialist Tarun Barot, JG Parmar and Bharat Patel are the three other senior policemen who have been granted bail.
The officers had filed the default bail plea after the investigating agency failed to file a chargesheet within the mandatory 90 days period.
Mr Singhal, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer, was arrested by the CBI in February in connection with the fake encounter of Ishrat Jehan and four others. Among the IPS officers arrested in fake encounter cases in Gujarat in the recent past, Mr Singhal is the first one to get bail.
Mr Barot and Mr Parmar, though given bail today, would remain in jail as they are facing trial in Sadik Jamal fake encounter case.
The four men are not to leave the state and would have to present themselves before the investigating officer once a month.
The CBI had contested the bail plea on technical grounds stating that since investigations were on, the chargesheet could not be filed. The CBI is trying to trace Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) of CID Crime, PP Pandey, whom the agency has been seeking to interrogate in this case. The investigation agency is also likely to grill DG Vanzara, who is behind bars in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
Ishrat Jehan was killed with her friend Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh and two others, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana on June 15, 2004 on an empty stretch of road between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. The Gujarat Police had claimed that the group had its affiliation with the terror outfit of Lashkar-e-Taiba and was in the city to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.