Ahmedabad:

A special CBI court here today allowed (accepted) the discharge petition of former in-charge DGP and the then JCP P P Pandey in Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

The court had completed its hearing on the petition on January 6 and reserved its verdict.

Ishrat Jahan, a college student from Mumbai and suspected LeT operative along with her boy friend and two Pakistani nationals were gunned down by Gujarat police on June 15, 2004.

P P Pandey and several other police officials were made accused in the matter which according to CBI was a fake encounter.

Pandey who was also earlier jailed in the matter with other police officials and was later taken back in to service but had to resign from the post of in-charge DGP for his being an accused in the case, had filed discharge petition before the CBI court hearing the matter.

In the petition filed in January 2017 Pandey had claimed that the case is based on circumstantial evidence and the chain of events have not been established prima facie and there is no material on record to show what could be the motive of the Applicant/accused to be a part of the so-called conspiracy.

He had also said that the CBI has concocted the evidence by fabricating the statements of witnesses to somehow implicate him for political reasons.

Mother of Ishrat, Shamima Kauser had opposed Pandey’s discharge petition saying that he had concealed and misrepresented the case against him as disclosed by the CBI. The chargesheet dated July 3, 2013 discloses material that shows the clear involvement of him in the criminal conspiracy that culminated in the fake encounter killings of her daughter. She had claimed that Pandey had visited Ishrat several times when she was allegedly kept in illegal confinement in Khodiyar Farm on S.G. Highway from 12th June 2004 onwards. The statements of the witnesses recorded before a Judicial Magistrate also show that Pandey was part of the conspiracy which led to the illegal abduction, unlawful confinement and extra-judicial killing of her daughter.

The CBI had also opposed the petition claiming that he was one of the conspirators.

The court, however, accepted Pandey’s plea and allowed his discharge petition.

The court is likely to soon announce its verdict on the discharge petitions of 2 IB officials accused by the CBI of involvement in the Ishrat case – Rajeev Wankhede and Tushar Mittal . They have challenged the special CBI court order which took cognizance of a supplementary chargesheet filed on February 2, 2014 and issued summons for their appearance. The court took cognisance of this supplementary chargesheet almost four years after it was originally filed. A total of four IB officers were summoned based on this supplementary chargesheet – the others are former special director Rajinder Kumar and Mukul Sinha.

Wankhede and Mittal have argued in their petition that permission had not been taken from the Centre to prosecute them.Ishrat’s mother has also opposed these petitions.

DeshGujarat