CBI heat on IB in Sadiq Jamal fake encounter case

The CBI is scanning the role of at least five senior IB officials, including two special directors, in the January 2003 Sadiq Jamal Mehtar fake encounter case. It has also recorded the witness statement of its then deputy director DD Padsalgikar.

The CBI is scanning the role of at least five senior IB officials, including two special directors, in the January 2003 Sadiq Jamal Mehtar fake encounter case. It has also recorded the witness statement of its then deputy director DD Padsalgikar.

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The probe suspects Mehtar was allegedly targeted by a then IB assistant director at the behest of a Dawood Ibrahim aide, Tariq Parveen, who suspected him of having illicit relations with his wife and wanted to fix him, CBI sources said.

Retired IB officer, G Savadatti who has been questioned by the CBI, was then attached to the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB) in Mumbai and had allegedly generated a false “source report” on Jamal.

The move led to his detention in December 2002, a transfer and finally murder in a fake encounter on January 13, 2003, near Galaxy cinema at Naroda in Ahmedabad by a team of the Mumbai crime branch.

“The SIB officer had created a fake source report that identified Sadiq Jamal as a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative sent from Dubai to Ahmedabad on a specific mission to kill Gujarat’s then chief minister Narendra Modi and Vishwa Hindu Parishad chief Pravin Togadia.”

Last December, CBI had filed its chargesheet in the case against eight Gujarat policemen, including two retired officers, invoking charges of criminal conspiracy and murder.