Ishrat Jahan encounter killing

;Amjad Ali Rana Amjad Ali Rana, also known as Amjadali Akbarali Rana, Akbar or Salim, was according to Indian sources from Haveli Deewan (Haveli Diwan) village in the Bhalwal Tehsil of Pakistan. he told the Gujarat Police that he was planning to commit a terrorist act in Ahmedabad. The CBI also said that he was abducted by the Gujarat Police and IB officials from Gota on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. He was found dead with an AK-56 rifle near his body, which according to CBI, was planted by the police officials. Amjad is believed to have met Javed several times in Oman, and also Javed and Ishrat in Ibrahimpur once. She was the second of seven siblings. Her lower-middle-class family, hailing from Bihar, lived in the Rashid compound in the Muslim-dominated area of Mumbra, Maharashtra. Ishrat's father, Mohammad Shamim Raza, had been the proprietor of a Mumbai-based construction company called Asian Constructions and her mother Shamima worked for a long time at a medicine packaging company in Vashi. However, her father died two years before the incident. To cover expenses after her father's death, Ishrat worked as a private tutor for children and did embroidery work to support her family. She also worked for Javed Sheikh ( Pranesh Pillai) as a secretary handling his accounts. Javed used to take her out of town at times on work. David Headley, who conspired with the Lashkar-e-Taiba in plotting the 2008 Mumbai attacks, later said during FBI interrogation that Ishrat Jahan was a "Fidayeen" (sacrificial aspirant) working for someone named Muzammil Bhat (or Muzammil Butt). Headley also said during interrogation by the NIA that she had been targeting the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra Modi, and was working with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). ;Javed Ghulam Sheikh (born Pranesh Pillai) Pranesh Pillai, later known as Javed Ghulam Sheikh, was the son of Gopinatha Pillai, a native of Noornad in Kerala. He had married in 1994 and had three children. He had migrated to Mumbra in Mumbai after marrying. Before his death, he had been booked for four assault cases in Mumbai and Pune, and had also been charged with involvement in a fake currency racket. Pranesh Pillai converted to Islam and changed his name in 1991 to Javed Sheikh to marry a Muslim woman called Sajida. Gujarat Police recovered two passports from Javed: one obtained using his original name Pranesh and a second one in his new name. Johar had reportedly been arrested in a trespassing case in Srinagar in 2003, along with Amjad. == The accused officers ==

Police officers accused in the case included Deputy Commissioner of Police Dhananjay G. Vanzara and Assistant Commissioner of the Police Crime Branch Girish Laxman Singhal. SIB officers accused in the case include Special Director Rajinder Kumar, Assistant Director M. K. Sinha, Deputy Superintendent of Police Rajeev Wankhede, and officer T. Mittal. == The encounter ==

In February 2004, J&K Police had shot dead Ehsan Illahi, an LeT terrorist. The IB-led operation that followed, gathered intelligence about Javed Sheikh's plans and lured him to Ahmedabad where Gujarat Police awaited the arrival of his car. Jahan had left her house on 11 June 2004, four days before she was killed. According to her brother, their mother Shameema did not like her going out of town with Javed. Therefore, she did not inform her mother when she left for Nashik. The police claimed that all four were connected with the Pakistan-based terror group LeT and were in Gujarat to assassinate Narendra Modi, in order to avenge the communal riots of 2002 in which more than 1000 people were killed. == Allegations ==

On 15 July 2004, news outlets such as The Indian Express, and Outlook carried news reports that "the Lahore-based Ghazwa Times, mouthpiece of the Lashkar-e-Taiba" had acknowledged Ishrat Jahan as a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative. According to these news reports, the Ghazwa Times had published an article on the "Jamat-ul-Dawa" [sic] website stating that "the veil of Ishrat Jahan, a woman activist of LeT, was removed by Indian police and her body was kept with other mujahideens (terrorists) on the ground", and that "Ishrat was with her husband, sitting on the front seat of the car". In June 2007, the Business Standard reported that the "global terror group Lashkar-e-Taiyba" had apologised to Indian Muslims on 2 May 2007 on the Jamaat-ud-Dawah's website "for causing them problems due to an inadvertent mistake", with the article implying that mistake in question was the claim that "Ishrat Jehan Reza had been a Lashkar operative". The media reports were subsequently used by the Government of India in its 2009 affidavit as evidence of Ishrat Jahan's links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Between July 2004 On 2 May 2007, Abdullah Muntazir, spokesperson of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah Pakistan, apologised to Ishrat Jahan's family and to all Indian Muslims for the journalistic mistake by his staff of quoting Indian news sites without proper attribution, which had enabled Indian media to claim that Ishrat Jahan had been a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative. He claimed the Jamaat-ud-Dawah had "published a vehement denial", A number of politicians and the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission demanded an inquiry. The Gujarat government had faced strong criticism by human rights groups for anti-Muslim human rights violations following the communal riots of 2002. They claimed that there is a pattern that many of these encounters followed: they always took place in the wee hours of the morning in a deserted area, with no witnesses; a vigorous exchange of fire resulted in the deaths of all the terrorists, while the police received no injuries; and the diary of the accused was often recovered, and contained incriminating evidence. According to People's Union for Civil Liberties, the Gujarat police did not follow normal procedures in their investigations. No FIR was lodged with the local area police station where the encounter occurred, no charge sheet, no inquest report, and no witness statement. No bullet marks or damage was observed on the road or surrounding area. It implicated a number of top police officials for the deaths, which were allegedly staged in order to win promotions and rewards. In the 243-page report, Tamang named the "encounter specialist" of the Gujarat police, the then head of the DCB, D.G. Vanzara, among others, as the accused in the "cold-blooded murder" of Ishrat Jahan and three others. The Division Bench directed the Registrar-General of the High Court to institute a departmental inquiry into the conduct of Mr. Tamang in holding a parallel inquiry into the encounter, when the High Court was already seized of the matter, and submitting the report without its permission. == Further investigation ==

The Gujarat State Government challenged the report of the metropolitan magistrate, saying that the policemen accused of faking the encounter were not given an opportunity to present their side of the arguments. Gujarat government's petition in the High Court against the Tamang report said it should be scrapped as it was "illegal and doubtful". In July 2010, some media outlets reported that the LeT terrorist David Headley involved in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks had named Ishrat as a member of LeT. However, in a letter to the Gujarat High Court, the NIA clarified that these media reports were false and David Headly did not speak about Ishrat Jahan. The Gujarat High Court in August 2010 held that the motive described by magistrate SP Tamang in his inquiry report on the Ishrat Jahan encounter case cannot be accepted and also raised doubts on the magistrate's conclusion about the time of death of the four. A Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Karnail Singh, was set up to probe the case further. The SIT sent four teams to Srinagar, Delhi, Lucknow and Nashik to probe Ishrat's alleged terrorist links. The team's forensic and ballistic experts, reconstructed the events of the encounter. Karnail Singh appointed a team headed by Professor T D Dogra and Dr. Rajinder Singh, Director CFSL Delhi to help reconstruction of scene of occurrence. On 21 November 2011, the SIT told the Gujarat High Court that the Ishrat Jahan encounter was not genuine. After the SIT filed its report, the High Court ordered that a complaint under Indian Penal Code Section 302 (murder) has to be filed against those involved in the fake encounter, in which over 20 policemen, including senior IPS officers, were involved. The CBI began investigations in the case with the help of Gujarat IPS officer Satish Verma. The CBI in their investigations had for the first time tightened its noose against a top cop in any encounter case, PP Pandey. PP Pandey had plotted Ishrat's encounter with the Central IB official Rajendra Kumar. == Arrests ==

After somewhat more than a year, on 21 February 2013 CBI arrested Gujarat IPS officer G. L. Singhal who was then Assistant Commissioner of the Police Crime Branch at the time of the incident, in connection with the alleged fake encounter. The CBI in its FIR alleged that Singhal, now Superintendent of Police at State Crime Records Bureau played an active role in the encounter which was later found to be fake by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the Gujarat High Court. Besides Singhal, CBI had previously arrested senior police officers, Tarun Barot, J. G. Parmar, N. K. Amin, Bharat Patel and Anaju Chaudhary. After the mandatory 90 days for the CBI to file its chargesheet in the case (which it failed to do), all the accused were released on bail, except Amin. A CBI court, issued an arrest warrant for another accused Additional DGP (Crime) P. P. Pandey, who is absconding, though he has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court to get the FIR cancelled. The following day, an Ahmedabad court remanded Vanzara to CBI custody till 10 June. The CBI expressed the desire to arrest Rajendra Kumar but Intelligence Bureau chief Asif Ibrahim opposed it on many occasions, drawing the ire of CBI. The CBI was able to arrest Rajendra Kumar in 2016 but he was granted bail by the court. == 2013 developments ==

In June 2013, India Today reported that Asif Ibrahim, the chief of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), had told the Prime Minister's Office and the Home Minister that the IB had "enough evidence" to prove that Ishrat Jahan belonged to an LeT module which planned to kill Narendra Modi and Lal Krishna Advani. India Today reported Ibrahim as telling the Government that David Coleman Headley had revealed this in his interrogation by the FBI. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation had told the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs about Headley's claims on a "female suicide bomber named Ishrat Jahaan". Headlines Today report On 13 June 2013, Headlines Today, an English news channel and subsidiary of India Today group, revealed that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani were among the leaders who were on the hit-list of the alleged terrorists killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police in Ahmedabad on 15 June 2004. It also claimed that Ishrat Jahan was among the terrorists assigned to execute the plot. It released unsubstantiated audio tapes of the conversation of allegedly a LET commander and Javed Sheikh, a man killed in the encounter. The news channel also produced the letter of IB chief to CBI director, in which he said that David Headley also revealed that Ishrat Jahan was an LeT operative. However, Headley's confession to the FBI had already been dismissed as hearsay by the NIA On 14 June, the leaked tapes were produced as evidence before the Gujarat High Court by the counsel for the Gujarat Government, Tushar Mehta. However, the bench refused to consider them as evidence, asking Mehta to take them to CBI for investigation. A group of social activists alleged that the IB was selectively leaking tapes to the media in order to scuttle the CBI probe just 24 hours ahead of the scheduled hearing of the case in the Gujarat High Court. They also criticized the media for airing the telephone calls without any forensic tests or voice tests. Tehelka report In June 2013, Tehelka magazine published an exposé that revealed that the CBI had in its possession an audio recording of a conversation between Gujarat's former Minister of State Praful Khoda Patel, senior IAS officer G. C. Murmu, and other top officials in a meeting called to chalk out a plan to safeguard the interests of the officers whose names could crop up in the investigation. The conversation was secretly recorded by a meeting attendee, Girish Laxman Singhal, one of the two accused police officers who had been arrested by the CBI in the case. Resignation of Vanzara On 1 September 2013, Senior Gujarat Police Officer D G Vanzara said he had resigned from IPS and blamed a lack of interest shown by the state government in rescuing him and other police officers jailed in police encounter cases. He sent his resignation from Sabarmati Jail, but his resignation was refused. He retired in 2014 while still in jail and was released on bail in 2015 after nearly eight months of imprisonment. == 2014 developments ==

2014 CBI report In May 2014, CBI filed a report before a special court in Ahmedabad that it did not have prosecutable evidence against former Gujarat Minister Amit Shah. == 2016 developments ==

Allegations against an unnamed congress politician by one of the accused officers. In February 2016, one of the officers accused in the case, former Intelligence Bureau Special Director Rajinder Kumar, said he was pressured and offered "allurements" to implicate the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the case in an attempt to defame Modi. He said there was a conspiracy against Modi led by a senior Congress leader from Gujarat. ==See also==