Janata Dal (United) leader Shivanand Tiwari on Wednesday expressed hope that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) would name the real conspirators in its second chargesheet that it would be filing in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case.
Tiwari, who was commenting on the CBI's chargesheet filed in the Gujarat High Court that the Ishrat Jahan case was a fake encounter, said the entire country wants to know as to who conspired the entire episode.
"I heard the CBI Director saying that it is a preliminary chargesheet, their investigation will go on and they will try to find out the conspirator. We are more interested in knowing who is the conspirator. It is clear that the encounter was fake, and an innocent girl was killed," said Tiwari.
"So, it should come to the fore as to who is the conspirator. And I expect the CBI to name the conspirators in its second chargesheet," he added.
The CBI in its chargesheet in the Ishrat Jahan case alleged that cops at the Ahmedabad crime branch had written the FIR even before the 'fake encounter' took place. It has charged seven policemen - including DG Vanzara who is in jail and then crime branch chief PP Pande, who is absconding - with murder, conspiracy and destruction of evidence, abduction and under sections of the Arms Act.
The chargesheet says the CBI suspects the involvement of senior intelligence officer Rajendra Kumar and his role and that of others in the IB needs to be investigated further.
The chargesheet rebuts the Gujarat Police claim that Ishrat, a Mumbai college student, and the three men shot dead along with her, were driving towards Ahmedabad when they were intercepted and killed in an exchange of fire on June 15, 2004. The chargesheet says they were abducted and that a cop drove a car with three of them to the encounter site.
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It alleges that one of the men killed in the encounter, Zeeshan Ali, was abducted by the police in April that year, another, Amjad Ali, in May and that Ishrat and a third man Javed were abducted in June. The CBI chargesheet says they were held at different farmhouses.
The agency has alleged that the weapons found with Ishrat and the others at the encounter site were supplied by the state Intelligence Bureau.
Rajendra Kumar was the Gujarat station chief of the Intelligence Bureau or IB when Ishrat and the others were shot dead; the policemen involved said they had received alerts from the IB that the group planned to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Kumar's interrogation by the CBI has created a sharp divide between his agency and the CBI, which is expected to name him as an accused in its next chargesheet, to be filed most likely after he retires at the end of July.
Nineteen-year-old Ishrat was killed along with three others on June 15, 2004 allegedly by a team of Crime Branch officials on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
The Crime Branch had then claimed that the four were LeT members and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.