The Gujarat High Court on Friday constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by a senior Delhi Police official, to probe the killing of college student Ishrat Jahan in a suspected staged shootout in 2004.
The team will comprise three IPS officers. It will be headed by Karnail Singh, joint police commissioner, Delhi, and include two from Gujarat - Satish Verma and Mohan Jha.
The court turned down the Gujarat government's plea to hand over the probe to the Gujarat Police and criticized it for stating that it did not want police officers from outside the state in the probe team. It has directed the state government to issue the notification in this regard within a fortnight.
Ishrat Jahan, a Mumbai college-going teenager, along with Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh, Amjad ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in a suspected staged shootout by crime branch officers near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The police claimed they were Laskhar-e-Taiba operatives out to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.