Ahmedabad, December 16: A court here today allowed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the death of Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan in an encounter with the Gujarat police to question suspended state police officers D G Vanzara and N K Amin.
The SIT had filed an application in the CBI court of Chief Judicial Magistrate A Y Dave seeking permission to allow head of the SIT Karnail Singh and two other members Mohan Jha and Satish Verma to interrogate Vanzara and Amin, accused in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, who are lodged in separate jails under judicial custody.
Accepting the SIT’s plea, the court said it was necessary in the interest of justice that the probe team questioned the accused persons.
The time and date of questioning has not been mentioned in the order.
Vanzara is lodged in the Sabarmati Central Jail here while Amin was sent to Vadodara Jail by the Gujarat High Court after he had raised concern over his security in wake of his proposal to turn an approver in the fake encounter case.
Vanzara, an IPS officer, is also an accused in the 2006 encounter of Tulsiram Prajapati, a close aide of Sohrabuddin. Prajapati was a key witness to the killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi.
Ishrat was killed in an encounter, along with Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani, carried out by Ahmedabad Crime Branch officials near here on June 15, 2004.
Vanzara and Amin were part of the Crime Branch team which had carried out the encounter.
The Gujarat police, at the time of the encounter, had claimed that Ishrat (19) and the three others were operatives of Pakistan-based terror outfit LeT and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
According to the police, the encounter was carried out based on specific inputs from the Central intelligence agencies that Lashkar-e-Taiba was planning to carry out attacks on various parts of India, including Gujarat.
However, an inquiry report by Judicial Magistrate S P Tamang had last year said the encounter was “fake” and “carried out in cold blood”.
The SIT, whose members are IPS officers, has been constituted by the Gujarat High Court.
–PTI