NE LEGAL BUREAU
AHMEDABAD, JULY 7
The brother of Sadiq Jamal, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter here in 2003, has approached the Gujarat High Court to challenge the discharge of four policemen in the case.
A special CBI court had in its two orders discharged retired Deputy Superintendent of Police Tarun Barot, and policemen Chhatrasinh Chudasama, R L Mavani and A S Yadav in the 2003 case, after finding there were insufficient grounds to prosecute them.
Sadiq Jamal’s brother Shabbir Jamal last week filed the petition in the HC, challenging the CBI court’s orders to discharge the four policemen, the petitioner’s lawyer said on Wednesday.
Police had claimed that Sadiq Jamal, a resident of Bhavnagar in Gujarat, was a Lashkar-e Taiba operative out to kill the then chief minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders. He was killed in Naroda locality on Ahmedabad’s outskirts on January 13, 2003.
The CBI court first allowed the discharge pleas of Mavani and Yadav, and also of Barot and Chudasama later. The HC, in its order on June 16, 2011, had directed the city crime branch to register an FIR in connection with the killing of Sadiq Jamal, and then transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In its charge sheet filed in December, 2012, the CBI said the encounter was staged and part of a pre-planned conspiracy under which the accused policemen took custody of Sadiq from their Mumbai counterparts on January 2, 2003, confined him to a bungalow in Shahibaug till January 13, and then killed him.
The CBI had in its charge sheet named Barot, Chudasama, Mavani, Yadav, as well as police personnel K M Vaghela, G H Gohil, Ajaypal Singh, and J G Parmar (who died during pendency of trial) as accused.
