<http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/ishrat-jehan-case-high-court-asks-cbi-to-take-over-probe-154273?pfrom=home-india&cp>
Relevant sections of the Judgment of the Gujarat High Court handing over investigation into the fake encounter & murder of Isharat Jehan and others to the CBI:
62. In view of the aforesaid observations and discussion, the following directions:-
(a) Mr.R.R. Verma, Chairman of SIT (present) shall register another/fresh FIR on the basis of his final (8th) report to the effect that the alleged encounter is not found to be genuine and for causing death of the deceased and consequently for the alleged offences under IPC and other provisions of the relevant laws.
(b) The aforesaid FIR shall be filed by Mr.R.R. Verma, Chairman, SIT with the CBI, having jurisdiction for the crimes committed in Gujarat State, within a period of two weeks from the date of pronouncement of the order and the same shall be registered by the concerned officer of CBI.
(c) CBI shall thereafter take up the investigation at the earliest and shall make an attempt to complete the same at the earliest.
(d) CBI shall entrust the investigation to the team of its officers headed by an officer not below the rank of DIG. During the course of investigation, the said team of investigation shall be at liberty to take help/assistance of Mr.Satish Verma, IPS (1986 Batch, Gujarat Cadre), Member of the present SIT in order to get clues for investigation and further incidental aspects of the investigation. However, it is clarified that the final decision shall be of the CBI as referred to herein above.
(e) After the registration of FIR by the Chairman of SIT, the record of the investigation made by the SIT shall be handed over to CBI by the Chairman of SIT.
(f) After the registration of FIR and after handing over the entire record of SIT to CBI, appropriate report shall be submitted to this Court by the Chairman of SIT. It is only thereafter that the SIT shall stand dissolved.
(g) The State Government shall spare the service of Mr.Satish Verma as and when so desired or required by the CBI for helping the CBI to provide clues for further investigation or any other matter related thereto.
(h) Further investigation of C. R. No.8/2004 of Crime Branch Police Station shall be transferred to CBI, within one month after the registration of the FIR by CBI as directed herein above. The State Government shall issue appropriate orders/notification for such purpose. CBI thereafter shall file appropriate report based on conclusion of SIT as per its 8th Report in the concerned Court, but the full details and the relevant documents shall be produced only after investigation of the aforesaid another/fresh FIR is completed and appropriate Report is filed in the concerned Court for another/fresh FIR.
(i) It is also observed and directed that in the event during the course of investigation of the aforesaid another/fresh FIR or complaint vide C.R. No.8/2004 of Crime Branch Police Station, the CBI is required to take any action against any Member of SIT, the same shall not be taken without prior permission of this Court.
(j) All the record, reports and other material supplied by the SIT be sealed properly and be kept in safe custody of the Registrar General of this Court.
Also see: Ishrat Jehan case: The few good men upholding justice: A day after the Gujarat High Court accepted the SIT report stating in no uncertain terms that Ishrat Jehan - the 19-year-old student from Mumbra - was murdered by the men in uniform, a BJP worker aggressively defended the killing. The line of argument is clear - 'So what if Ishrat and three others were killed in a different spot and presented elsewhere and so what if the killing was staged? There were specific inputs from Central Intelligence Bureau. Were they not terrorists? Cops were only killing the bad guys. It is only the media that is making a big deal about it.' This foot soldier of the party only symbolised the malady that has now overwhelmed the party at the highest level in Gujarat. While at the national level, the BJP is raising the issue of whistleblowers being arrested, in their own backyard, they have a different yardstick for justice. Remorse and regret are remote in Gujarat's security establishment. The lid from this messy killing was first blown in 2009 by a metropolitan judge, S. P. Tamang, who was asked to carry out an inquiry into the alleged fake encounter. Unbiased, the judge did not hesitate calling this a cold-blooded murder in his over 200 pages-long handwritten report. The whistleblower was pilloried immediately.
Relevant sections of the Judgment of the Gujarat High Court handing over investigation into the fake encounter & murder of Isharat Jehan and others to the CBI:
62. In view of the aforesaid observations and discussion, the following directions:-
(a) Mr.R.R. Verma, Chairman of SIT (present) shall register another/fresh FIR on the basis of his final (8th) report to the effect that the alleged encounter is not found to be genuine and for causing death of the deceased and consequently for the alleged offences under IPC and other provisions of the relevant laws.
(b) The aforesaid FIR shall be filed by Mr.R.R. Verma, Chairman, SIT with the CBI, having jurisdiction for the crimes committed in Gujarat State, within a period of two weeks from the date of pronouncement of the order and the same shall be registered by the concerned officer of CBI.
(c) CBI shall thereafter take up the investigation at the earliest and shall make an attempt to complete the same at the earliest.
(d) CBI shall entrust the investigation to the team of its officers headed by an officer not below the rank of DIG. During the course of investigation, the said team of investigation shall be at liberty to take help/assistance of Mr.Satish Verma, IPS (1986 Batch, Gujarat Cadre), Member of the present SIT in order to get clues for investigation and further incidental aspects of the investigation. However, it is clarified that the final decision shall be of the CBI as referred to herein above.
(e) After the registration of FIR by the Chairman of SIT, the record of the investigation made by the SIT shall be handed over to CBI by the Chairman of SIT.
(f) After the registration of FIR and after handing over the entire record of SIT to CBI, appropriate report shall be submitted to this Court by the Chairman of SIT. It is only thereafter that the SIT shall stand dissolved.
(g) The State Government shall spare the service of Mr.Satish Verma as and when so desired or required by the CBI for helping the CBI to provide clues for further investigation or any other matter related thereto.
(h) Further investigation of C. R. No.8/2004 of Crime Branch Police Station shall be transferred to CBI, within one month after the registration of the FIR by CBI as directed herein above. The State Government shall issue appropriate orders/notification for such purpose. CBI thereafter shall file appropriate report based on conclusion of SIT as per its 8th Report in the concerned Court, but the full details and the relevant documents shall be produced only after investigation of the aforesaid another/fresh FIR is completed and appropriate Report is filed in the concerned Court for another/fresh FIR.
(i) It is also observed and directed that in the event during the course of investigation of the aforesaid another/fresh FIR or complaint vide C.R. No.8/2004 of Crime Branch Police Station, the CBI is required to take any action against any Member of SIT, the same shall not be taken without prior permission of this Court.
(j) All the record, reports and other material supplied by the SIT be sealed properly and be kept in safe custody of the Registrar General of this Court.
Also see: Ishrat Jehan case: The few good men upholding justice: A day after the Gujarat High Court accepted the SIT report stating in no uncertain terms that Ishrat Jehan - the 19-year-old student from Mumbra - was murdered by the men in uniform, a BJP worker aggressively defended the killing. The line of argument is clear - 'So what if Ishrat and three others were killed in a different spot and presented elsewhere and so what if the killing was staged? There were specific inputs from Central Intelligence Bureau. Were they not terrorists? Cops were only killing the bad guys. It is only the media that is making a big deal about it.' This foot soldier of the party only symbolised the malady that has now overwhelmed the party at the highest level in Gujarat. While at the national level, the BJP is raising the issue of whistleblowers being arrested, in their own backyard, they have a different yardstick for justice. Remorse and regret are remote in Gujarat's security establishment. The lid from this messy killing was first blown in 2009 by a metropolitan judge, S. P. Tamang, who was asked to carry out an inquiry into the alleged fake encounter. Unbiased, the judge did not hesitate calling this a cold-blooded murder in his over 200 pages-long handwritten report. The whistleblower was pilloried immediately.
The government spokesperson Jainarayan Vyas had even questioned the legal standing of the inquiry. An inquiry was ordered against Tamang, after the state government moved a petition in the high court seeking the scrapping of his report for being "illegal and doubtful." Subsequently, the high court constituted a three-member SIT to probe into the allegations of the killings being staged. One of the members of the team, Satish Verma, in January this year, came out with an affidavit stating that the alleged encounter was indeed murder.
The 1986-batch IPS officer's whistleblower act wasn't taken kindly by the state government and in its signature fashion, an old case pertaining to an RDX landing at Gosabara near Porbandar in 1993 was resurrected against him. During the course of his illustrious career, Verma is said to have slapped Yatin Ojha, an active BJP worker and advocate and arrested BJP MLA Shankar Chaudhary for rioting. Verma, along with his colleagues Atul Karwal and S. Zala, is facing allegations that he had let off Sattar Maulana, a key accused in the RDX case.
Verma moved the high court seeking redress and in his petition pointed out that the PIL, which was used to resurrect the case against him, was filed by Ojha in 2005 and even the state government had earlier accepted that the PIL was not really in public interest but was more of personal vengeance. Meanwhile, as the probe gathered momentum and the cops started feeling the heat, they moved the high court seeking the probe be transferred to the CBI, which the state government has been calling Congress Bureau of Investigation all along.
Satish Verma or Tamang are certainly not cases in isolation and stories have been written ad nauseum listing the officers who have been bearing the brunt in the state for exposing the unsavoury face of governance. As the Gujarat High Court on Monday accepted the SIT report, vindicating the whistleblowers, what now stares in the face of everyone is the duplicity of the BJP, which changes its stand as it moves from power to the opposition and vice versa. Read more at: <http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/ishrat-jehan-fake-encounter-case-satish-verma-s.-p.-tamang/1/161812.html>
And: Punish the murderers in uniform
Besides the fact that the four had been killed by weapons of a calibre that the police did not possess, not one of the 70 rounds fired by the police in the alleged encounter was recovered. Worse, the police claimed that they shot out the left tyre of the car in which the four were travelling and it thereafter hit a divider on the right; actually, had they done so, it ought to have swerved left. Mr Tamang has determined that the four had actually been kidnapped on June 12 from Mumbai by a Gujarat police squad and brought to Ahmedabad and murdered, and their bodies were later taken to the spot of the alleged encounter. Even now, there is need for a more detailed inquiry as to how the Gujarat police was able to abduct people from another state and get away with it. Further, we need to know how Jehan and Shaikh were linked up to two possibly Pakistani nationals about whom not much seems to be known, except the police charge that they were Lashkar- e- Tayyeba militants from Jammu & Kashmir.
Former Home Secretary GK Pillai insists Jehan and Shaikh were working for the LeT, and were being used to provide cover to the militants whose mission was to kill Narendra Modi. The police also cite the fact that Jehan and Shaikh were initially hailed as martyrs on the LeT website and then the post was hastily taken off. It is difficult to take them at their word because of their many lies, not only in this, but other Modi and Gujarat linked cases. Even assuming that Jehan and Shaikh were LeT sleepers, they were, by no means, outside the pale of the Indian law. They were not even, as is alleged in the case of Sohrabuddin, well-known dangerous criminals who had to be shot at sight, rather than arrested.
And: Punish the murderers in uniform
Besides the fact that the four had been killed by weapons of a calibre that the police did not possess, not one of the 70 rounds fired by the police in the alleged encounter was recovered. Worse, the police claimed that they shot out the left tyre of the car in which the four were travelling and it thereafter hit a divider on the right; actually, had they done so, it ought to have swerved left. Mr Tamang has determined that the four had actually been kidnapped on June 12 from Mumbai by a Gujarat police squad and brought to Ahmedabad and murdered, and their bodies were later taken to the spot of the alleged encounter. Even now, there is need for a more detailed inquiry as to how the Gujarat police was able to abduct people from another state and get away with it. Further, we need to know how Jehan and Shaikh were linked up to two possibly Pakistani nationals about whom not much seems to be known, except the police charge that they were Lashkar- e- Tayyeba militants from Jammu & Kashmir.
Former Home Secretary GK Pillai insists Jehan and Shaikh were working for the LeT, and were being used to provide cover to the militants whose mission was to kill Narendra Modi. The police also cite the fact that Jehan and Shaikh were initially hailed as martyrs on the LeT website and then the post was hastily taken off. It is difficult to take them at their word because of their many lies, not only in this, but other Modi and Gujarat linked cases. Even assuming that Jehan and Shaikh were LeT sleepers, they were, by no means, outside the pale of the Indian law. They were not even, as is alleged in the case of Sohrabuddin, well-known dangerous criminals who had to be shot at sight, rather than arrested.
There are many, including Modi in the Gujarat State Assembly elections of 2007, who have argued that Sohrabuddin was a criminal and 'deserved to die'. They conveniently overlook the murder of his wife, Kausar Bi. Needless to say, they see no irony in the fact that arrogating to yourself the right to kill, allegedly for a higher cause, is exactly the argument that terrorists give. It goes without saying that in any civilised country, the right to kill is one that is exclusively reserved for the state. While in war time, and through special legislation like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, it is delegated to its armed forces, in normal circumstances it is only exercised through the judiciary and that, too, through judicial due process. Here, as we have seen in India, it is exercised in the "rarest of rare" circumstances.
Unfortunately, the Indian political system has tolerated extra-judicial killings and fake encounters for too long...
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