SIT probe confirms Ishrat encounter was fake, court orders fresh FIR

In a major setback to the Narendra Modi government, the Gujarat high court on Monday ordered the filing of a fresh FIR against some top police officers, after a special investigation team (SIT) confirmed that the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter was a fake one.

The SIT, set up by the court last December to probe the killing of 19-year-old Ishrat and three others by a police team, revealed that all four had been killed prior to the alleged encounter on 15 June 2004.

Headed by IPS officer R R Verma and two other senior officers, the SIT was set up after relatives of the victims complained to the court that it was a fake encounter.

The court, however, did not reveal the complete details of the SIT report as it could prejudice the probe. The division bench ruled that a separate FIR under section 302 for murder should be filed in the concerned police station against officers involved in the killings.

The court has to decide which agency – the Central Bureau of Investigation or the National Investigation Agency – should probe the police killings. ''The probe agency would need to find out who played the key role in the encounter, what was the motive and what was the actual time of the death of the four people,'' the court said.

Ishrat, a Mumbai college student, was killed along with Javed Sheikh (alias Pranesh Pillai), Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar on the outskirts of Ahmedabad by officers and men of the Ahmedabad crime branch. They claimed that the four were members of the Lashkar-e-Tayyba (LeT), a Pakistan-based terrorist outfit, who were on a mission to kill Modi.