Ishrat case: SIT submits final report in Gujarat high court

The Special Investigation Team, probing the encounter deaths of Mumbai teenager Ishrat Jahan and three others, on Friday submitted its final report in the Gujarat high court.

On October 7, a division bench of justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari had directed the SIT to submit the final report that would conclude if the encounter of the four persons, claimed by Gujarat Police to be terrorists, was genuine or fake.

"We have submitted the report as directed by the high court," a SIT member said.

He declined to comment further on the report, saying the matter now rests with the court which will look into the findings and decide the next course of action.

Sources close to the SIT said the report dealt with the nature of the police encounter.

Ishrat, a 19-year-old college girl, along with Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in a shootout by Ahmedabad Crime Branch on June 15, 2004.

Crime Branch had then claimed the four were LeT members and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The probe in the case was supervised directly by the high court which constituted the SIT last year to investigate the genuineness of the gunfight after petitions were filed by

Ishrat's mother Shamima Kausar and Gopinath Pillai, father of Pranesh, raising questions about the police version of the incident.

During the last hearing on October 7, the court had acknowledged the progress made by the SIT and observed the investigations were going on in the right direction after IPS officer R R Verma took over as chief of the multi-member team.

It had further observed that SIT had made substantial progress and the probe was nearing an end.

Justice Patel had also said if the SIT establishes that the encounter was genuine, and there will be no need of filing a fresh FIR. However, if the team concludes that it was stage-managed, the court will give directions accordingly, he had said.