Less than a month after the Gujarat High Court formed a three-member committee under an Additional Director General of Police to probe the 2004 killing of Ishrat Jahan and three others in an encounter by Gujarat police, a magisterial report into the incident has claimed that the four were gunned down in cold blood, allegedly by police officers eager to get promotions and the appreciation of Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The 240-page report by metropolitan magistrate S P Tamang was released to the media on September 8 by advocate Mukul Sinha who is appearing on behalf of Ishrat’s mother Shamima in the Gujarat High Court. It was on Shamima’s petition that Justice Kalpesh Jhaveri on August 13 formed a committee under ADGP Pramod Kumar and sought a report on or before November 30. Ishrat Jahan, from Mumbra near Mumbai, was killed in an encounter along with three others in June 2004. The then DCP D G Vanzara, who later became a prime accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, had claimed that all four had links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Modi. Tamang’s inquiry report has called the encounter a fake. It states that the four were kidnapped from Mumbai on June 12, 2004 and killed on the night of June 14 by the police. Mentioning names of all the officers involved, Tamang said they all conspired to get promotions and appreciation. He said there were no Pakistanis among the four. Mukul Sinha said they would demand immediate arrest of all police officers named in the report – then Police Commissioner K R Kaushik, DCB Joint Commissioner of Police P P Pandey, then DCP D G Vanzara, ACP Narendra Amin, ACP G L Singhal and other junior DCB officials.
Social activist Teesta Setalvad demanded probe into all encounters in the state since 2002. As the case came back into public glare, following the revelation by Magistrate Tamang, Setalvad’s non-government organisation, Citizens for Justice and Peace, on September 9 presented kin of two other victims of alleged police atrocities. “Criminal proceedings should be initiated, besides disciplinary actions, against the officers,” said Setalvad, giving details of 11 cases where at least 20 persons had lost their lives. She alleged that a group of senior police officials engineered the shootouts to make chief minister Narendra Modi happy. The encounters also drew strong criticism from former additional director general of police (intelligence) Sri Kumar, who alleged that the series of encounters were part of a “planned political strategy to propel Modi as a strict chief minister”.