Ahmedabad: Almost 4 months after a designated CBI court here dropped the proceedings against former IPS D G Vanzara and police officer N K Amin in Ishrat Jahan encounter case citing refusal of permission by the Gujarat government to prosecute them, four other accused ex-police officials have also approached the court with discharge petitions.

The court has fixed September 21 as the next date of hearing on the pleas of accused ex-cops G L Singhal, Tarun Barot, K G Parmar and A Chaudhry.

Earlier on May 2, this year, the court of designated CBI Judge J K Pandya had dropped the proceedings against Vanzara and Amin as the state government has not granted sanction to the CBI to prosecute them as required under Section 197 of the CrPC. They had filed a fresh discharge petition in the court after rejection of the earlier one. As per the section 197 of the CrPC the government’s sanction was necessary for the prosecution of a public servant for any action that was part of official duty.

Earlier Former in-charge DGP of Gujarat, P P Pandey was discharged in the case in February last year. He had spent 19 months in jail before being let out on bail in February 2015. Vanzara and Amin had in their earlier petition sought discharge on the basis of parity with Pandey’s case but it was rejected.

19-year-old Ishrat Jahan and three others including her boy friend Pranayesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh and two Pakistani nationals were gunned down by Gujarat police in June 2004 near Ahmedabad. The police claimed that they were Lashkar E Toiba (LeT) operatives planning to assassinate the then CM Narendra Modi. The case was later handed over to CBI which claimed that it was a fake encounter and in its first charge-sheet in 2013 it named seven Gujarat police officers including Vanzara, Pandey and GL Singhal.

DeshGujarat