Ishrat Jahan, the 19-year-old Mumbai girl branded a terrorist and killed by the Gujarat Police, did not have any link with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the special investigation team said.
In its 22-page complaint to the CBI — which formed the basis of an FIR lodged by the agency Saturday — the Gujarat high court-appointed SIT said the June 15, 2004 encounter killing of Ishrat and three others was staged as the police had them in custody before that date. It also debunked the police’s claim that the four were on a mission to kill chief minister Narendra Modi.
In 2009, an Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate had also called the encounter fake.
The CBI, tasked with conducting a detailed probe by the high court, has named 20 policemen in its FIR. They face charges of murder and destruction of evidence, a PTI report said.
According to the SIT, Ishrat had no criminal record and met Javed Ghulam Sheik — one of the others killed — for the first time in May 2004. The two traveled to Lucknow and Ibrahimpur in UP and to Ahmedabad twice.
Of the four, the only person with terrorist links was Amjad Ali, a Pakistani, SIT claimed. It said his alias ‘Babar’ came up during the interrogation of some arrested accused in Kashmir.