Ishrat Jahan encounter killing
Those killed in the incident were Ishrat Jahan Raza, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra, Maharashtra, and three men – Javed Ghulam Sheikh (born Pranesh Pillai), Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar.
[2] The state agencies and police claimed that Ishrat Jahan and her associates were Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives involved in a plot to assassinate the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.
[12] However, the NIA called these reports "baseless",[13] and the CBI said that this assertion was fabricated by the IPS officer Rajendra Kumar, who is one of the suspects in the case.
[18] However, a later report by the metropolitan magistrate SP Tamang stated Rana's identity card, along with that of suspect Zeeshan, was forged by the police and the two men were Indian citizens.
[29][30] Headley also said during interrogation by the NIA that she was targeting the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi, and was working for the Lashkar-e-Taiba Terrorist Group.
However, he went back on part of his statement that LeT chief Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi had told him that "Ishrat Jahan module" was a botched operation, adding that he had no personal knowledge about her.
[24] Born Pranesh Pillai, he converted to Islam and changed his name in 1991 to Javed Sheikh to marry a Muslim woman called Sajida.
However, a later report by the metropolitan magistrate SP Tamang stated that identity cards were forged by the police and the two men were Indian citizens.
The IB-led operation that followed, gathered intelligence about Javed Sheikh's plans and lured him to Ahmedabad where Gujarat Police awaited the arrival of his car.
According to her mother, she had called from a public phone booth outside a Nashik bus stop, and told her that "Uncle Javed Sheikh hasn't come yet."
[40] The police claimed that all four were connected with the Pakistan-based terror group LeT and were in Gujarat to assassinate Narendra Modi, in order to avenge the communal riots of 2002 which had led to the deaths of numerous Muslims.
[46] A probe into the encounter was ordered after Ishrat Jahan's family insisted that she was innocent, and the Mumbai police said she had no criminal background, and their investigation did not find anything that could implicate her.
[41] Ishrat Jahan's funeral procession was attended by over 10,000 people in Mumbra and the Samajwadi Party state president Abu Azmi said that he would demand a CBI probe into the killings.
[38] During this period, there had been several police encounter deaths in the Gujarat, three of which have been attributed to attempts to kill Narendra Modi in retaliation for the alleged involvement of the state machinery in the riots.
[53] They claimed that there is a pattern that many of these encounters followed: they always took place in the wee hours of the morning in a deserted area, with no witnesses; a vigorous exchange of fire resulted in the deaths of all the terrorists, while the police received no injuries; and the diary of the accused was often recovered, and contained incriminating evidence.
No FIR was lodged with the local area police station where the encounter occurred, no charge sheet, no inquest report, and no witness statement.
[58][59] The Gujarat State Government challenged the report of the metropolitan magistrate, saying that the policemen accused of faking the encounter were not given an opportunity to present their side of the arguments.
[60] In July 2010, some media outlets reported that the LeT terrorist David Headley involved in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks had named Ishrat as a member of LeT.
[31] However, in a letter to the Gujarat High Court, the NIA clarified that these media reports were false and David Headly did not speak about Ishrat Jahan.
[13] IB has alleged that the original NIA report did have excerpts detailing Headley's account about Ishrat's links with LeT: these two paragraphs were later deleted.
[66] After somewhat more than a year,[67] on 21 February 2013 CBI arrested Gujarat IPS officer G. L. Singhal who was then Assistant Commissioner of the Police Crime Branch at the time of the incident, in connection with the alleged fake encounter.
The CBI in its FIR alleged that Singhal, now Superintendent of Police at State Crime Records Bureau played an active role in the encounter which was later found to be fake by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the Gujarat High Court.
[68][69] Besides Singhal, CBI had previously arrested senior police officers, Tarun Barot, J. G. Parmar, N. K. Amin, Bharat Patel and Anaju Chaudhary.
[15] The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation had told the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs about Headley's claims on a "female suicide bomber named Ishrat Jahaan".
The news channel also produced the letter of IB chief to CBI director, in which he said that David Headley also revealed that Ishrat Jahan was an LeT operative.
[77] A group of social activists alleged that the IB was selectively leaking tapes to the media in order to scuttle the CBI probe just 24 hours ahead of the scheduled hearing of the case in the Gujarat High Court.
[78] In June 2013, Tehelka magazine published an exposé[79] that revealed that the CBI had in its possession an audio recording of a conversation between Gujarat's former Minister of State Praful Khoda Patel, senior IAS officer G. C. Murmu, and other top officials in a meeting called to chalk out a plan to safeguard the interests of the officers whose names could crop up in the investigation.
The conversation was secretly recorded by a meeting attendee, Girish Laxman Singhal, one of the two accused police officers who had been arrested by the CBI in the case.
[80] In May 2014, CBI filed a report before a special court in Ahmedabad that it did not have prosecutable evidence against former Gujarat Minister Amit Shah.
