Mumbai: Ishrat Jahan and three others, Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Jishan Johar, were killed by the Gujarat police in an alleged fake encounter near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
The Gujarat Police had claimed that the four were connected with the Lashkar-e-Taiba and had come to Gujarat to assassinate the then chief minister Narendra Modi in order to avenge the communal riots of 2002.
The case created ripples in the media and the state police faced a lot of heat, causing the then Modi-led Gujarat a lot of embarrassment. But last year in June, the Central government virtually brought down curtains on the 11-year long probe by turning down CBI’s request for granting prosecution sanction to the officials who were accused of conspiring the alleged fake encounter.
And now with David Coleman Headley claiming in his statement that Ishrat Jahan was a Lashkar suicide bomber, the case is back in the spotlight.
Read: Ishrat Jahan was a Lashkar suicide bomber, David Headley tells court
However, in 2009, a report submitted by Metropolitan Magistrate S.P. Tamang in the Ahmedabad metropolitan court had said that Ishrat had nothing to do with the LeT and was killed in police custody with the others.
The Ahmedabad metropolitan court then ruled that Ishrat's killing was a fake encounter. Tamang's report said the Crime Branch police kidnapped Ishrat and the others from Mumbai on June 12, 2004, and brought them to Ahmedabad. Tamang said that there was no evidence to link the victims with the LeT. There was also nothing to indicate that they had come to Gujarat to kill Modi.
The Gujarat Government challenged the report of the metropolitan magistrate, saying that the policemen accused of fake encounter were not given an opportunity to present their side of the arguments. The Gujarat Government's petition in the High Court against Tamang's report said that it should be scrapped as it was 'illegal and doubtful'.
The Gujarat High Court stated that Ishrat Jahan's encounter case was of national importance and ordered the police witnesses to be posted where they would not be working as subordinates to officials accused in the case.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Karnail Singh, was set up to probe the case further. The SIT sent four teams to Srinagar, Delhi, Lucknow and Nashik to probe Ishrat's alleged terrorist links.
On November 21, 2011, the SIT told the Gujarat High Court that the Ishrat Jahan encounter was not genuine. After the SIT filed its report, the High Court ordered that a complaint under Indian Penal Code Section 302 (murder) has to be filed against those involved in the fake encounter, in which over 20 policemen, including senior IPS officers, were involved.
In a supplementary chargesheet filed in February 2014, the CBI slapped murder and conspiracy charges against Rajendra Kumar, former special director of the Intelligence Bureau and three other IB officers, P. Mittal, M.K. Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede, over its probe into the Ishrat killing. And in June 2015, the Centre rejected CBI’s plea to prosecute them, virtually closing the case.
But who was Ishrat Jahan and the other three accused?
Ishrat Jahan Shamim Raza was a 19-year-old girl, who was a second year Bachelor of Science student at Mumbai's Guru Nanak Khalsa College. Ishrat used to work as the Secretary of Javed Sheikh (Pranesh), and used to handle his accounts.
Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Gulam Sheikh was the son of Gopinatha Pillai, a native of Noornad in Kerala. Before his death, he had been booked for four assault cases in Mumbai and Pune, and had also been charged with involvement in a fake currency racket. Gujarat Police recovered two passports from Javed: one obtained using his original name Pranesh and the second one in his new name.
Amjad Ali Rana, also known as Akbar or Salim, was originally a resident of the Haveli Deewan village in the Bhalwal Tehsil of Pakistan. According to the CBI chargesheet, he told the Gujarat Police that he was planning to commit a terrorist act in Ahmedabad.
Zeeshan (alias Jisan Johar alias Abdul Ghani), along with Amjad, is said to have been caught in a trespassing case in Srinagar in 2003.
