New Delhi: Now Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will investigate that if Ishrat Jahan and the three other who killed in an encounter by Gujarat police in 2004 were terrorists or not.
Sources said that the agency is looking into the allegedly terror links now as a part of a larger conspiracy. CBI Director Ranjit Sinha said, “We are trying to establish their nationalities.”
Meanwhile agency had earlier faced critics from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its silence on Ishrat’s alleged terror links in its first charge sheet submitted earlier this month. The CBI had then indicated that a supplementary charge sheet may go into the larger conspiracy and the alleged terror links.
The agency’s first step towards investigating terror links was to announce a cash reward of Rs. 5 lakh for any information on two men killed along with Ishrat Jahan on the border of Ahmedabad by officers of the city’s Crime Branch.
CBI had given advertisements which were published in newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir in which CBI asked for the “real identity” of Amjadali Rana and Zeeshan Johar.
Meanwhile Gujarat Police had claimed that they had been informed by intelligence officials that Amjadali and Zeeshan were Pakistani nationals and part of a Lashkar-e-Taiba plot to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi. But the charge sheet of CBI said Ishrat Jahan and the others were killed “in cold blood”. The agency said the killings were a joint operation between the Gujarat Police and the state’s Intelligence Bureau.
Seven Gujarat policemen have been charged with conspiracy, murder, and destruction of evidence. They include senior Crime Branch officer DG Vanzara, already in jail, and then Joint Police Commissioner PP Pande, who is absconding.
The CBI has also not commented yet on whether Modi or his close aide and then state Home Minister Amit Shah knew in advance about the plans to kill the four people.
The BJP, which rules Gujarat, called the charge sheet politically motivated and accused the Centre of a conspiracy to hide evidence.
Bureau Report
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