Gujarat opposes handing over Ishrat case to CBI

GANDHINAGAR - The Gujarat government Monday strongly opposed handing over the probe into the Ishrat Jahan killing case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Advocate General Kamal Trivedi told a division bench of Justice Jayant Patel and Justice Abhilasha Kumari that entrusting of the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake gunfight case by the Supreme Court to the CBI was no reason for entrusting the June 2004 Ishrat case to the central agency.

The petitions seeking handing over the investigations to the CBI were filed separately by Ishrat’s mother Shamima Kausar and Gopinath Pillai, the father of Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh. Ishrat and Javed were among the four killed in an allegedly fake gunfight on the outskirts of Ahmedabad by the Gujarat Police.

The two petitions have been clubbed together and the division bench has taken up day-to-day hearings on them.

Trivedi argued that even the central government had admitted that the Sohrabuddin and the Ishrat Jahan killings were different cases and need not be considered on the same yardstick. He also claimed that the central government had accepted Ishrat to be an activist of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and it would also be wrong to presume that she had no links with Javed and that he was innocent.

He claimed that Javed was hand-in-glove with Ishrat and there was evidence of their having stayed together in some hotels.

The advocate general also maintained that the inquiry report conducted by former Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate, S. P. Tamang, who had held the Ishrat gunfight to be a “fake one,” was “illegal” and supported the high court’s earlier order staying implementation of the recommendations of the report.

The “Tamang report deserves to be summarily rejected,” he maintained.

Hearing on the petition is expected to continue Tuesday.