Gujarat: SC rejects Modi govt plea on SIT

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has turned down the plea of the Narendra Modi government against constitution of a special investigation team to probe the killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others by the state police.

Mumbai-based Ishrat (19) was killed in an ‘encounter’ along with Sheikh, Amjad Ali, alias, Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani by the Gujarat crime branch officials near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The Modi-led government had requested the probe be handed over to another SIT formed by the state government.

“How can the state come with such a plea? The court is not deprived of its power. In exceptional cases, it can do (constitute a team). In the facts of the case, we find no reason to interfere,” said a bench comprising Justice B Sudershan Reddy and Justice S S Nijjar. The Gujarat high court had ordered constitution of a three-member SIT to inquire into the suspected fake encounter of teenager Ishrat Jahan and three others by the crime branch of the state police.

Senior counsels Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatgi said, on behalf of state government, that the high court had no power to constitute a SIT.

The high court move followed the Supreme Court’s request for a separate SIT as the SC-appointed SIT, headed by former CBI director R K Raghvan probing post-Godhra communal riots, expressed its inability to probe the Ishrat case.

The high court then ordered constitution of a SIT comprising Karnail Singh, a 1984 batch IPS officer whose name was suggested by the Union home ministry, Mr Mohan Jha, a 1985-batch Gujarat cadre officer named by the state government, and Mr Satish Verma, a 1986-batch officer suggested by the petitioner and father of Javed Ghulam Sheikh, alias, Pranesh Pillai, one of the ‘suspected terrorist’ killed along with Ishrat. The state government had also challenged the partial acceptance of Tamang Committee report of September 7, 2009, which had held the encounter as "fake" and sought prosecution of officers responsible for it.

Following the ‘encounter’, the Gujarat Police claimed that Ishrat and three other slain youths were Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives on a mission to kill chief minister Narendra Modi.