The Ahmedabad crime branch policemen who were involved in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case are in serious trouble now.
The chairman of the special investigation team (SIT) appointed by the Gujarat high court, RR Verma, on Thursday filed an official complaint against them with the CBI.
The only hope for the police officers lies involved in the fake encounter lies in their approaching the special CBI court in the city for anticipatory bail. Legal experts said that if the court does not grant them anticipatory bail, the accused policemen will have no alternative but to surrender to the CBI.
The Ishrat SIT chief has already mentioned that 20 police officers were involved in the staged encounter in which Mumbai girl Ishrat Jahan, her friend Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai and two alleged Pakistani nationals, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, were killed.
"The only legal shelter available to the policemen involved in the case is to seek anticipatory bail before they are arrested," said a lawyer connected with the case.
He further said that the FIR had been lodged against them on the high court's order earlier this month. "Hence they are likely to be arrested soon. The only way they can evade arrest is by getting anticipatory bail," the lawyer said.
Sources familiar with the case said that some policemen had themselves sought investigation by the CBI when the high court constituted the SIT consisting of three IPS officers. The court, however, had rejected their plea.
"The court had handed the case over to the central probe agency after going through Ishrat SIT's final report. As the suspect policemen had sought a CBI probe themselves, they cannot approach the higher judiciary against the case being given to the CBI," said a source connected to the case.
After a yearlong enquiry, the Ishrat SIT had concluded that Ishrat and three others were killed in cold blood in a staged encounter.
The high court bench consisting of Justice Jayant Patel and Justice Abhilasha Kumari had, on December 2, asked RR Verma to file a fresh FIR in the case.
More than a dozen policemen are lodged in Sabarmati jail in connection with the Sohrab case.
