Ishrat case: CBI interrogates chief public prosecutor

CBI today questioned chief public prosecutor of the sessions court here, appointed by the state government in the 2004 fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others.
Sudhir Brahmabhatt, who is the chief public prosecutor at Ahmedabad City Civil and Sessions court, was summoned and examined by the CBI for over eight hours in relation to the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, CBI sources said.
The law officer was also summoned to CBI office at Gandhinagar yesterday and higher officers of the team had grilled him for four hours, sources added.
"I was summoned by CBI and they examined me yesterday and today also," Brahmabhatt told PTI declining to divulge any further details.

It is for the first time that a public prosecutor has been summoned and interrogated by the agency in Ishrat Jahan encounter case.
Brahmabhatt was appointed as special public prosecutor in many important cases by the state government, including the Akshardham terror attack case of 2002, serial bomb blast case of 2008 and in the case of hooch tragedy in 2009.

He was elevated as Chief Public prosecutor at Ahmedabad Sessions court in 2006, while he was public prosecutor at the time of encounter in 2004.
Isharat along with Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, was killed in a fake encounter on June 15, 2004 in the outskirts of the city here.

At that time, Gujarat Police had claimed that all the four were terrorists, who entered the city to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
CBI had arrested total six policemen in the state, including the suspended IPS officer G L Singhal.
However, four of these accused policemen including Singhal have been granted bail as the agency has failed to file charge sheet against them within 90 days of their arrest and one more accused has filed his bail application today on the same ground.