DISPOSE KAUSAR’S PLEA IN SIX MONTHS: SC

The Supreme Court directed the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court to place a petition demanding CBI probe into the alleged encounter of Ishrat Jahan for hearing before a Division Bench and to dispose it within six months. Making serious observations against Justice K.S. Jhaveri of the HC, who had been hearing the plea and had stayed an inquiry report of Metropolitan Magistrate S.P. Tamang into the encounter, the SC also set aside a departmental inquiry and adverse observations made against Tamang by Justice Jhaveri. The petition was filed by Ishrat’s mother Shamima Kausar on September 9, 2009; two days after Tamang submitted his report in which he alleged that Ahmedabad City Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) officials had staged the encounter to please Chief Minister Narendra Modi and to get recognition for bravery. In June 2004, a team of DCB officers claimed to have killed four persons – Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Jauhar – in a shootout near Ahmedabad airport. The officials had claimed that the four were terrorists and were on a mission to kill Narendra Modi.