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Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD: In yet another major setback to the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat, Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate S.P. Tamang, has ruled that the incident in which Ishrat Jahan and three others were killed in June, 2004, was yet another case of “fake encounter.”
In his 243-page hand written report on the encounter, Mr. Tamang has named the then “encounter specialist” of the Gujarat police, D.G. Vanzara, and others as accused in the “cold blooded murder” of the teenaged girl and three others.
Mr. Vanzara and several other policemen are already in jail in connection with the Sohrabuddin case which the State government confessed before the Supreme Court was a case of “fake encounter.”
A special three-member team of top police officers of the State appointed by the Gujarat High Court for a fresh investigation into the Ishrat Jahan encounter is seized of the matter.
Claiming that Ishrat and three others were killed in fake encounter by the police officers for their personal interests, get promotions and gain appreciations from the Chief Minister, Mr Tamang appended a list of top police officers running into about two pages who he held responsible for the fake encounter. Besides Mr Vanzara and his then deputy in the Crime Branch police, N. K. Amin, who along with Mr Vanzara was also arrested in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, the list includes the then Ahmedabad police commissioner, K. R. Kaushik, the then chief of the Crime Branch, P. P. Pandey, another alleged encounter specialist Tarun Barot and a host of other senior police officers.
Mr Tamang’s report said the Crime Branch police “kidnapped” Ishrat and three others from Mumbai on June 12 and brought them to Ahmedabad. The four were killed on the night of June 14 in police custody, but the police claimed that an “encounter” took place on the morning of June 15 near Kotarpur water works on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The rigor mortis that had set in clearly indicated that Ishrat died between 11 p.m. and 12 midnight the previous night and the police apparently pumped bullets into her body to substantiate the encounter theory.
It said the explosives, rifles, and other weapons allegedly found in their car were all “planted” by the police after the encounter.
The police had then claimed that Ishrat, a resident of Mumbra near Mumbai, and three others — Javed Sheikh, a convert son of Gopinath Pillai of Kerala and two Pakistani citizens Amzad Ali Rana and Jishan Jauhar — were connected with Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and were coming to Gujarat to assassinate Mr. Modi to avenge the 2002 communal riots.