New Delhi: The Gujarat government on Tuesday rejected a magisterial report which claimed that the state police had killed Mumbai college student Ishrat Jahan and three of her friends in a fake encounter.
Gujarat government spokesperson Jay Narayan Vyas said Ahmedabad Metropolitan magistrate S P Tamang’s report is invalid and was prepared in haste.
“We consider Justice Tamang's report invalid and we will challenge it,” said Vyas in Ahmedabad. He alleged the report was "bad in law” because the sections of the criminal procedure code used in the inquiry were not tenable with the case.
Vyas wondered how could the magistrate proceed with an inquiry in the case when there was already a high-level police investigation ordered by the Gujarat High Court on the very day--August 13, 2009, -- that had been given time till November 30 this year
Mumbai college student Ishrat, 19, and her three friends--Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani--were killed by officials of Gujarat Police's Detection of Crime Branch near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
A magisterial report on the encounter was released to the media on Monday and it claimed that the four were gunned down in cold blood, allegedly by police officers eager to get promotions and the appreciation of Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Senior police officer D G Vanzara, who was then head of the Detection of Crime Branch, had claimed that the four had links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist groups and they were planning to kill Modi.
Tamang’s report alleges that the encounter was staged by the then Ahmedabad Police Commissioner K R Kaushik, Crime Branch Chief P P Pandey and Vanzara. The report blames 21 policemen for the alleged fake encounter.
Vanzara is already under arrest for his alleged involvement in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh fake encounter.
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