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Government denies sanction to prosecute ex-IB officials

NDA govt’s decision in Ishrat case bizarre, says Congress.

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Ahmedabad — The Central Bureau of investigation (CBI), which had sought the centre’s approval for prosecuting four Ahmedabad-based Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers, including former IB joint director Rajinder Kumar, in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case has been given a thumbs-down by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. Sources said that the federal home ministry had after a long correspondence with the CBI cited lack of evidence and rejected its plea against the quartet in the case in which Mumbai’s 19-year-old college girl Ishrat and her three associates were shot dead by the Gujarat police on June 15, 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

 The CBI had submitted its final report in the case two years ago and had sought the ministry’s sanction without which the court will not take cognizance of its chargesheet. The CBI had in its chargesheet named Kumar and accused him and three other IB officers of murder.

According to the CBI, Kumar provided the weapons for the bogus shoot-out and that at the scene of the killing, the officers had planted an AK-56 to make it appear as though the encounter was genuine. 

The police had claimed that there were intelligence reports suggesting that all four of them were part of a terrorism plot aimed at assassinating the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

PTI adds: Congress on Monday night termed as “bizarre” the centre’s decision not to grant sanction to prosecute four Intelligence Bureau officials in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case and said the move indicates that the NDA government has something to hide.

In a statement, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said the entire world knows that “Ishrat Jahan and three others were killed in a fake encounter”.

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