Ishrat Jahan case: Discharge pleas of Vanzara, Amin rejected

The special CBI Court in Ahmedabad on Tuesday rejected discharge applications of former IPS officers D.G. Vanzara and N. K. Amin in connection with the fake encounter case of 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan and three others. 

The pleas were rejected by special judge J. K. Pandya.

Last month, Shamima Kauser, slain Ishrat's mother, had challenged the discharge plea of Vanzara. 

A resident of Mumbra in Thane district of Maharashtra, Ishrat along with Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar was killed in a police “encounter” on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. 

Seeking parity with former DGP P.P. Pandey, Vanzara had sought discharge from the court in the case. Earlier, Pandey was discharged from the case for want of evidence against him.

Amin had contented that the encounter was genuine and that the testimonies of the witnesses were not reliable. 

In the court, Shamima had maintained that her daughter was murdered as part of a “conspiracy” between high level officers and those holding influential positions. 

Immediately after the encounter, the Gujarat Police had said that the four had terror links and had come to Gujarat to kill the chief minister. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the then chief minister of the state. 

In 2016, in her one bhk house in Mumbra, Shamima had narrated to THE WEEK how Ishrat studied, took tuition and acted as a bread earner of the family. Shamima had categorically stated that if you were in a custody and killed it was not an encounter. “It was planned before hand,” she had said.