A special court on Thursday granted bail to suspended additional director general of police (ADGP) PP Pandey in the 2004 fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others. This is the first instance in which an accused has been granted regular bail. Pandey is the seniormost IPS officer to be arrested in a fake encounter case and has spent over a year in jail as an undertrial. Pandey has been asked to submit two surety bonds of Rs 50,000 each and his passport, as part of the bail conditions.
The same court is likely to pronounce its order on another accused officer DG Vanzara later in the day. Pandey was the joint commissioner of police of Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) when 19-year-old Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan, her friend Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai and two Pakistani nationals Zeeshan Johar and Amjadali Rana were killed in a police encounter in the outskirts of Ahmedabad in 2004.
The police had claimed they were Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives who wanted to kill Narendra Modi, who was then Chief Minister of Gujarat. Later, CBI investigation claimed that they were killed in a fake encounter in a joint operation by the Gujarat police and officials of the Intelligence Bureau.
The CBI chargesheeted seven Gujarat police officials including Pandey, retired IPS DG Vanzara, IPS GL Singhal, retired DSP Tarun Barot among others along with four IB officials namely former special director Rajinder Kumar, Rajiv Wankhede, T Mittal and MK Sinha. Singhal, Barot and two other accused were granted default bail after CBI didn’t file chargesheet on time. The IB officers were never arrested and the chargesheet against them is pending for nearly a year awaiting government sanction for prosecuting them.
Indian Express | February 5, 2015
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