Two Intelligence Bureau officials have challenged summons issued to them by a magistrate’s court in Ahmedabad in the Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter case. Special CBI judge JK Pandya will hear the IB officials’ pleas on January 6.
The magistrate’s court for the CBI’s cases had last month issued summons to the Intelligence Bureau’s Special Director Rajinder Kumar and officers MS Sinha, Rajeev Wankhede and TS Mittal, based on a supplementary chargesheet filed by the CBI naming them four years ago as accused in the case.
Mr Wankhede and Mr Mittal, who worked as assistant central intelligence officers when the alleged fake encounter took place in June 2004, have challenged the summons on the grounds that the CBI doesn’t have sanction from the central government to prosecute them.
The CBI has charged the four IB officials with murder, criminal conspiracy, illegal detention and kidnapping.
It was only when the CBI informed the magistrate about denial of sanction by the centre to act against these officers that the court decided to summon them. The four officers have never been arrested in the case.
The first chargesheet filed by the CBI in this case names seven Gujarat police officers, including Indian Police Service officers PP Pandey, DG Vanzara and GL Singhal, as accused. All of them are out on bail.
Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old college girl from Mumbra near Mumbai, her friend Javed Sheikh and two others were killed in an alleged fake encounter by Ahmedabad police on the outskirts of the city in June 2004.
