Ishrat case: Modi named in Gujarat cop’s testimony in CBI chargesheet

Mangalore Today/DHNS

Ahmedabad, July 5: A senior Gujarat police officer charged with the murder of Ishrat Jahan and three others said Chief Minister Narendra Modi had signed off on the staged encounter, another police officer has testified in a statement that features in the chargesheet filed this week by the Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI.

Among the annexures in the document presented to a court in Ahmedabad this week is the statement of a Gujarat police officer named DH Goswami. In 2004, when Ishrat, a 19-year-old college student, and three men were killed by the police on the outskirts of the city, he was a Deputy Superintendent of Police.

 

Mr Goswami’s statement has been made in the presence of a magistrate, lending it some legal weight.

In his statement, he says that two days before the encounter, at the Crime Branch office in Ahmedabad, DG Vanzara, then the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch), was discussing the plans to kill Ishrat and the others with Rajendra Kumar, the Gujarat station chief of the Intelligence Bureau, and PP Pandey, then the Joint Commissioner of Police and the head of the Crime Branch.

Mr Goswami says that he was privy to the planning of the conspiracy and that he heard Mr Kumar asking Mr Vanzara to "talk to the Chief Minister." Mr Vanzara replied that he would talk to "white beard and black beard" - code names, sources in the CBI say, for Mr Modi and then Home Minister Amit Shah.

The next day, Mr Goswami says he visited the Crime Branch again with GL Singhal, a Crime Branch officer who reported to Mr Vanzara. Mr Goswami alleges that Mr Singhal objected during this discussion to the plans for the encounter. Mr Goswami alleges that Mr Vanzara was adamant and said he had "got approval from the Chief Minister and Minister of Home."

Mr Vanzara, who is in jail, and Mr Pandey, who is absconding, are among the seven policemen accused of murder and destruction of evidence by the CBI. The agency has said that it is investigating the role of Mr Kumar and three other Intelligence Bureau officers in the encounter.

In its chargesheet, the CBI did not comment on whether Ishrat and her associates were terrorists planning to assassinate the chief minister, a claim cited by the policemen who shot them. The agency has also not referred to whether it believes the Chief Minister and his Home Minister were aware of the plans for the encounter.

Mr Modi’s party, the BJP, alleges that the government is using the CBI investigation to discredit Mr Modi, who is the front-runner for the BJP’s prime ministerial nomination.

The ruling Congress has rejected that charge. "Facts are facts... the guilty must be punished," Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said on Thursday.