Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 6 (IANS) The Supreme Court Tuesday refused to revive an Ahmedabad judicial magistrate’s report which had termed the killing of Thane girl Ishrat Jahan by a Gujarat police team as a staged gun battle.
A bench of Justice B.N. Agrawal and Justice Aftab Alam, however, issued notice to the Gujarat government seeking its stand as to why the Gujarat High Court order which had earlier suspended Judicial Magistrate M.P. Tamang’s report on Isharat Jahan killing should not be stayed.

Notices were also issued to the union government and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on a law suit filed by Ishrat Jahan’s mother seeking revival of the Tamang report to get her daughter’s name cleared.

A Gujarat police team had shot dead four people, including 19-year-old Ishrat, a resident of Maharashtra’s Thane town, June 15, 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, claiming that she had been a terror operative who had reached the city to eliminate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The three other persons, who too had been shot dead by the police team were identified as Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani.

But Tamang, who conducted the mandatory magisterial probe under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, concluded that Ishrat Jahan and the three others were murdered by police in cold blood in a staged gun battle.

However, the Gujarat High Court had Sep 9, acting on a lawsuit by the Gujarat government, suspended Tamang’s report, saying that it was beyond the jurisdiction of the judicial magistrate.