An 11-year-long probe in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case has hit a dead end after the government turned down the CBI’s request of prosecuting four IB officials who were allegedly involved in the encounter, including retired Special Director Rajender Kumar.
Official sources stated that the Home Ministry, after perusing the documents submitted by the CBI two years back, rejected the agency’s plea.
Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old college student, and three others were killed in an encounter that took place on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in 2004. The crime branch had then claimed that the four of them were Lashkar-E-Toiba (LeT) operatives who had reached Gujarat to kill the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi — intelligence that had allegedly been generated by Kumar, during his tenure.
Kumar, who retired about two years ago, was posted as the joint director of IB in Ahmedabad when the Ishrat encounter took place. The former IB officer had been questioned twice by the CBI regarding his alleged role in the conspiracy to carry out the encounter.
CBI sources maintained that they had evidence that Kumar was one of the officers who had interrogated Ishrat when she was allegedly taken into illegal custody by the Gujarat Police before being killed in the encounter.