Amjad Ali Akbarali Rana, who was killed in the encounter along with Ishrat Jehan and two others on June 15, 2004, had told the Gujarat police that he had come to Ahmedabad with the plan to commit a terrorist act at some crowded location in the city, states the chargesheet filed by the CBI in the case. The chargesheet filed by the central probe agency has termed the encounter ‘fake’.
Rana was a resident of Haveli Deewan, village Bhalwal, in Sargoda District of Pakistan’s Punjab province. The CBI investigation revealed that on May 26, 2004, a team of Gujarat Police, comprising of accused police officials N K Amin, Tarun Barot, I K Chauhan, and two officials of subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (IB) M K Sinha and Rajeev Wankhede abducted Amjad Ali from Gota, crossing the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
Investigation revealed the above team of accused officers kept him in illegal custody at Arhan farmhouse from May 26, 2004, to the early hours of June 15, 2004, the chargesheet states. Subsequently, DIG D G Vanzara, N K Amin, G L Singhal and joint director of subsidiary IB Rajinder Kumar met Amjad Ali at the farmhouse during his confinement. Amjad Ali Rana, Ishrat Jehan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, and Zeeshan Johar were brought to a spot on the highway between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar at 5 am on June 15 and killed in an ‘encounter’.
CBI Director Ranjit Sinha on Friday said that the investigating agency is taking the assistance of National Investigation Agency (NIA) and other agencies in probing the Ishrat Jehan case. He was replying to queries about whether the CBI had sought the NIA’s help in connection with the statements made by 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind David Headley.
When asked if CBI is considering DSP D H Goswami’s statement which he made before a magistrate stating that then DIG D G Vanzara had got approval from Gujarat’s political leadership for the encounter, Sinha responded, “We are investigating all the angles related to it,” Sinha said that the IB is co-operating with CBI’s probe in the case.