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Ishrat Jahan fake encounter

Kashmir Times. Dated: 7/5/2013 9:54:17 PM

The real hand behind cold-blooded murder has yet to be revealed

Though the charge-sheet filed by the CBI, investigating into the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case has named seven senior police and intelligence officers including the Intelligence Bureau Special Director Rajendra Kumar for the premeditated cold blooded murder, the motive of the crime and the real behind it are yet to be revealed. The CBI has yet to file a supplementary charge-sheet and it is a matter of speculation whether the truth about what actually happened in this case and who master-minded it will ever come to light. From the very beginning when Ishrat Jahan and three others-Zeeshan Johar,Javed Sheikh and Amjad Ali were killed the premeditated and fake nature of these brutal killings was not in doubt. After years of delay and consistent attempts to hush up the case in several ways it is now established beyond any iota of doubt that Ishrat Jahan was the victim of the worst kind of state terrorism. According to the charge-sheet, the conspiracy to kill Ishrat Jahan and others in a fake encounter was hatched in the office of the then DIG Gujarat Police D.G.Vanzara, since rewarded and now occupying the post of Director General of Police. ADG police D.D.Pande was also present in this meeting held on June 13,2004. The SP G.L.Singhal along with State Intelligence Bureauc officials not only held Zeeshan Johar in illeal custody but also secured weapons for the encounter which were later shown to have been recovered from the bodies of the deceased. Ishrat Jahan and Javed were abducted on June 12 from a toll bridge at Basad in Gujarat while Amjad was kidnapped by them earlier. They were held captive for three days at various interrogation hideouts in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar before being drugged, blindfolded and driven to an isolated spot where they were shot dead along with Zeeshan and Amjad. The police fired seventy rounds during the fake encounter. That even the FIR in this case was drafted before the encounter makes the pre-planned and conspiratorial nature of the gory killings too obvious.
In a state which was being ruled by Narendra Modi with iron hand and where nothing moved without his direction or consent it is difficult to believe that such senior officers, some of whom were subsequently rewarded, could have acted on their own. Though one has to wait for the justice, already delayed for years, to be delivered in this as also in several other similar cases it is clear beyond any shadow of doubt that this fake encounter was a part of the state terrorism against Muslims let loose in the State. Though the chargesheet does not hold Modi or his home minister Amit Shah directly responsible for this horrific fake encounter it cannot be imagined that these officers had acted on their own for hatching the conspiracy and executed it in such cold-blooded manner. The belligerent attitude of the State government against holding any impartial and independent probe into such incidents clearly spills the beans.
In a country where such fake encounters as a part of state terrorism have been a common feature and justice has been invariably denied to the victims while real facts are seldom revealed one must hope against hope that the hidden hand behind the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter will be eventually exposed and those really guilty for such macabre killings punished for their crimes against humanity. So far the justice has been denied and truth has remained concealed in all such barbaric incidents of selective and communal killings, whether those during anti-Muslim Pogrom in Gujarat, allegedly Congress-planned anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in Delhi or hundreds of victims of state terrorism in Kashmir, North East or other parts of the country.