The Gujarat High Court served a notice here today to CBI, which is probing the 2003 Sadiq Jamal encounter case, in connection with a bail plea filed by one of the main accused--suspended Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) Tarun Barot.
Justice Anant S Dave issued a notice to the Central Bureau of Inventigation (CBI) and posted the next hearing of the case to August 21.
In his bail plea, Barot has contended CBI has filed the charge sheet in the Sadiq encounter case on December 21 2012.
However, the prosecution in the CBI court has not been progressing. Barot has been in jail for more than two years in the encounter case.
Last year, Barot had sought bail from the CBI court and the Gujarat High Court, which were rejected.
The encounter case relates to Sadiq Jamal, a Bhavnagar resident, who was killed in an encounter with the Gujarat police near Galaxy Cinema in the city's Naroda area on January 13, 2003.
The genuineness of the encounter became an issue after a Mumbai-based former journalist Ketan Tirodkar filed an affidavit before a court in Mumbai that he witnessed Jamal being handed over to the Gujarat police by the "encounter specialist" police officer Daya Nayak of the Mumbai police, a few days before the alleged encounter.
The High Court had ordered a CBI probe on a petition by Sadiq's brother Sabir Jamal. CBI investigated the case and filed its charge sheet in December 2012.
The CBI chargesheet had named Barot, police inspectors Jaysinh Parmar, Irshad Ali Saiyad and Kishoresinh Vaghela, police sub-inspectors Ramji Mavani and Ghanshyamsinh Gohil as well as police constables Ajaypalsingh Yadav and Chhatrasinh Chudasama as accused.
Besides criminal conspiracy (Section 120 B of the Indian Penal Code) and murder (Section 302 IPC) they were also charged with wrongful confinement (Section 342 of IPC) and giving false information regarding an offence committed (Section 203 of the IPC).
