Ishrat case: HC issues notice to CBI, Guj govt

A division bench of the Gujarat high court on Thursday issued notices to the Central Bureau of Investigation and the state government in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case.
 
The court began hearing the case after the Supreme Court on April 19 asked it to constitute a division bench, while acting on the petitions filed by Gopinath Pillai, father of Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, who was one of the three persons killed along with Ishrat.

A division bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Z K Saiyed issued the notices while hearing the petition by Gopinath seeking a CBI inquiry into the killing of his son. The court has asked the Gujarat government and the CBI to file their reply by July 5.

It also asked Pillai's lawyers to file their rejoinder with regard to the government and the CBI's reply by July 9, and scheduled the matter for hearing on July 14. Mumbai resident Ishrat, 19, was killed along with Pranesh, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani in a police encounter near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The Gujarat police had then claimed that Ishrat and the three others were Lashkar-e-Tayiba operatives who were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the encounter was carried out based on intelligence inputs. Judicial magistrate S P Tamang, however, had held the encounter as 'fake' and said it was executed in cold blood by some police officials for their personal benefit.

The court will also be hearing a bunch of petitions including one by Superintendent of Police in the Anti-Terrorist Squad Girish Singhal and the state government.

Singhal has contended that the report of the judicial magistrate which had held the encounter as 'fake' and sought prosecution of the officers responsible for the killing, be set aside. Singhal is one of the officers indicted in Tamang's report of September, 2009.

The state government has also opposed Tamang's report by contending that the inquiry by the magistrate was outreaching his jurisdiction. The government also moved another application seeking extension of the special investigation team that was set up by the high court to inquire into the case.

All the petitions which are related to the same case will be heard together by the court.