A special CBI court on Thursday allowed the discharge applications of former police officers D G Vanzara and N K Amin in the Ishrat Jahan case. The officers filed the pleas after the CBI failed to obtain the Gujarat government’s sanction to prosecute them. Judge J K Pandya said that since the government did not sanction their prosecution, their discharge applications were allowed and proceedings against them would be dropped in the case.
Under section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the government’s sanction is mandatory for the prosecution of a public servant for an act done as part of the official duty.Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed by the Gujarat Police in an encounter on June 15, 2004. The police had said that they were terrorists and planned to kill Narendra Modi.
An SIT had concluded that the encounter was fake, after which the Gujarat High Court had transferred the case to the CBI. On August 7, 2018, the CBI court had rejected the officers’ discharge applications. While the CBI had refused to take any stand on the state government’s decision to decline sanction to prosecute Vanzara and Amin, Ishrat Jahan’s mother Shamima Kauser had opposed their petitions. With agency inputs