Sadik Jamal encounter: CBI to grill senior agency man

The CBI will soon question a senior official of a central intelligence agency to ascertain his role in the death of Sadik Jamal Mehtar in a fake encounter by officials of the Gujarat police's Ahmedabad Crime Branch in January 2003. Abhishek Sharan reports.

The CBI will soon question a senior official of a central intelligence agency to ascertain his role in the death of Sadik Jamal Mehtar in a fake encounter by officials of the Gujarat police's Ahmedabad Crime Branch in January 2003.

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The official, who belongs to the Indian Police Service, was holding a key post in Gujarat when Mehtar was detained based on intelligence inputs allegedly generated by him, a CBI source said. The intelligence alert had described Mehtar as an operative of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and alleged that he was on a specific mission to target the then chief minister and two other senior central BJP leaders.

"We want to know the basis of the intelligence official's inputs on Sadik Mehtar, according to which he was a terror operative on a mission," said a CBI source. Mehtar, a resident of Bhavnagar, was killed on January 13, 2003, in a police encounter after being kept in illegal detention for a few days.