Monday 23 September 2013

Ishrat Jahan case: CBI questions Narendra Modi's minister, another summoned

Ahmedabad: Two ministers in Narendra Modi's Gujarat government are among four people to be questioned in connection with the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

The Central Bureau of Investigation today questioned Gujarat Law Minister Pradeep Singh Jadeja at an undisclosed location, said sources. The agency has also summoned Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama over audio tapes of a meeting in 2011, on which voices purportedly belonging to ministers and officials of the state government discuss derailing investigations into the killing of 19-year-old college student Ishrat Jahan in 2004.

Advocate General Kamal Trivedi, in whose office the meeting was allegedly held, has also been summoned, along with former state minister, Praful Patel.

In that meeting, the ministers and officials allegedly discussed ways to discredit the Special Investigation Team's probe into the killings.

The CBI has already questioned two officials who attended the meeting, AK Sharma and GC Murmu.

Ishrat was shot along with three men on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in 2004, by the Crime Branch of the Gujarat Police, which claimed that all four were terrorists involved in a plot to kill Narendra Modi.

The CBI in its chargesheet in July said seven cops had shot the group "in cold blood" and destroyed evidence.

One of the accused policemen, senior IPS officer DG Vanzara, recently submitted his resignation accusing the Modi government of using cops to promote their agenda and then abandoning them. Vanzara said policemen like him had acted in compliance with a conscious policy of the Modi government.

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