One of the top Gujarat police officials fearing arrest in the fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others, today approached the Supreme Court which issued a notice to CBI on his plea to quash proceedings against him in the case.
A bench of justices Gyan Sudha Mishra and Madan B Lokur agreed to hear the plea of Additional DGP PP Pandey, a 1980 batch officer who reportedly went missing in April this year after applying for sick leave.
Pandey approached the apex court seeking to quash the criminal proceedings against him in the case saying he has been falsely implicated by his colleagues IPS officers who are jealous of him.
Pandey, against whom a special CBI court had also issued an arrest warrant on May 2 for failing to respond to the summons of the probe agency, said in his plea that he was not involved in anyway in the case and he had just conveyed the information received from the intelligence to the crime branch officials.
Pandey was Joint Commissioner of Police when on June 15, 2004, Ishrat Jahan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
The police had at the time claimed that all four were terrorists on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The officer submitted in his plea that the apex court should restrain CBI from taking any action against him during the pendency of his plea before it.
Recently, a CBI probe team had searched his home, office and his home in native state Uttar Pradesh but could not trace him.
