AHMEDABAD, May 15:
A special CBI court today rejected a petition seeking to make BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi’s close aide and former Gujarat minister Amit Shah an accused in the encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others in 2004.
After hearing the petition filed by Gopinath Pillai, the father of one of the deceased Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Special CBI judge Geeta Gopi rejected his plea and accepted the CBI arguments against the inclusion of Shah and former police officer KR Kaushik, as accused in the encounter case.
The CBI had on May 7, filed a reply before the court and gave a ‘clean chit’ to Shah saying that there were no ‘sufficient evidences’ against the BJP general secretary, who is also incharge of party’s Uttar Pradesh affairs. The CBI made the same argument about Kaushik. Ishrat and three others — Javed Sheikh, Zeeshan Zohar and Amjad Rana were killed on June 15, 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in an alleged fake encounter with Gujarat Police.
Later the Gujarat Police had claimed that all four were Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives on a mission to kill Modi. In its charge sheets, the CBI had termed the encounter as a joint operation between the Intelligence Bureau and the Gujarat Police.
In the first charge sheet in June 2013, the CBI had named eight police officials.
In its supplementary charge sheet filed in February this year, the probe agency had named four senior Intelligence Bureau officers, including the then Special Director of IB in Gujarat Rajendra Kumar. (UNI)
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