Gandhinagar
The Central Bureau of Investigation, which has filed two charge sheets in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case and named at least a dozen police and central intelligence officials, on Wednesday sought to give a clean chit to Amit Shah, former Gujarat minister of state for home and Narendra Modi’s lieutenant.
In a report to the Special CBI court in Ahmedabad, the investigative agency stated that it had found no evidence about Shah’s involvement in the fake encounter or his ordering the shootout of the four persons, including Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan.
The CBI’s two charge sheets earlier had given clear indications that the killings were carried out by a team of senior police officials, led by Deputy Inspector General of Police DG Vanzara, acting under the guidance and sanction of the State Government.
The CBI court was hearing a petition by Gopinath Pillai, father of Javed Sheikh,
who was among those kill-
ed in the fake encounter. He has challenged the CBI’s decision to not include Shah in the charge sheet, accusing the agency of deliberately glossing over evidence against Shah.
In his petition filed in March, Pillai presented records of Shah’s phone calls with some of the accused police officers in the case and statements given to CBI by certain officers. A section of these officials had in their testimonies before a magistrate that they overheard senior accused cops saying that the encounter had the go-ahead of Amit Shah and Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
But the CBI has dismissed it all, calling it “hearsay evidence” that was not adequate to prosecute the former Gujarat home minister.
“The list of evidences cited by Pillai has already been looked into by the CBI and we are convinced that the same does not constitute any prosecutable evidence,” according to a CBI official.
“It will be the court’s call whether or not to arraign Shah as an accused based on this existing material,” the officer said.
RK MISRA
