Three-member Special Investigation Team, constituted by the Gujarat high court to inquire the 2004 encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others, met in Ahmedabad to chalk out the framework of probe.
The SIT, led by Karnail Singh, a 1984-batch Indian Police Services officer from Delhi, and comprising Mohan Jha and Satish Verma, both Gujarat cadre officers, have been holding meetings since the last two days in the city, a senior police official said on Wednesday.
"The SIT had convened meetings since the last two days. Karnail Singh was also present in the meetings," Satish Verma told PTI. The trio had met to finalise the contours of the investigation into the six-year-old encounter case, police said.
The high court in September, constituted the SIT after the Supreme Court-appointed team, probing the 2002 post-Godhra riot cases, expressed its inability to take up the 2004 episode.
Ishrat, 19, a Mumbai-based college girl, was killed in an encounter, along with Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani, carried out by Crime Branch officials near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
Gujarat police, at that time, had claimed Ishrat and the three others were operatives of Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
According to police, the encounter was carried out based on specific inputs from the Central intelligence agencies that Lashkar-e-Tayiba was planning to carry out attacks in various parts of India, including Gujarat.
However, last year, a report by Judicial Magistrate S P Tamang had said the gunbattle was "fake and carried out in cold blood".
The Gujarat high court, had earlier formed a SIT comprising IPS officers Pramod Kumar, Mohan Jha and J K Bhatt. But it was later dissolved after the Supreme Court asked the high court to look into the petitions regarding Ishrat afresh.
