A special CBI court today sent senior IPS officer P P Pandey, an accused in 2004 Ishrat encounter killing case, in judicial custody, after he surrendered before the court here.
After the Supreme Court yesterday refused to grant him protection in the form of anticipatory bail, state Additional Director General of Police (crime) P P Pandey today appeared before the special CBI court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate H S Khutwad and surrendered himself.
CBI, the investigating agency in the alleged fake encounter case, filed an application seeking 14 days' custodial interrogation of Pandey. The court has fixed the hearing on it tomorrow.
The court sent Pandey in judicial custody till August 27 and said that it would hear the application of CBI for his remand tomorrow.
Pandey, who had been evading arrest since long, was sent to Sabarmati central jail here.
He was the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Ahmedabad, when Ishrat, a Mumbra-based student, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were gunned down by Crime Branch sleuths on June 15, 2004, near here.
After his name surfaced in the encounter, Pandey had gone underground from April this year. He was declared an absconder by the court.
In the meantime, Pandey approached courts first for quashing of FIR against him and then for anticipatory bail to evade arrest in the case, but both of his appeals were rejected by all the courts, including the Supreme Court.
The CBI court here had issued a non-bailable warrant against Pandey on August 7.
Seven Gujarat policemen, including Pandey, had been named as accused and charged with murder and criminal conspiracy, among others, by CBI.
In its charge sheet filed earlier, CBI had said that the encounter was "fake" and a joint operation between Gujarat police and Intelligence Bureau.
