Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 6 (IANS) The Supreme Court Tuesday sought the Gujarat government’s stand on a lawsuit that seeks revival of a judicial report, which concluded that the state police had killed Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan and three others in cold blood in June 2004.
A bench of Justice B.N. Agrawal and Justice Aftab Alam issued notices also to the central government and the Central Bureau of Investigation on the lawsuit by the slain girl’s mother Shamima Kausar. She has also demanded an independent CBI probe into the killings of Ishrat and three men accompanying her.

The apex court sought the response of various parties within four weeks.

Shamima Kausar moved the apex court, challenging the Gujarat High Court’s Sep 9 order suspending Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate M.P. Tamang’s report on the Ishrat Jehan killing.

Tamang in his report questioned the Gujarat police claim that Ishrat and others were planning to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The report also said the police merely staged a shootout and killed them in cold blood.

Seeking the apex court’s directive to suspend the high court order, Shamima Kauser also sought the court permission to “use Metropolitan Magistrate Tamang’s report as per various provision of law of the land”.

This implied that Shamima Kausar might demand prosecution of the erring police officials involved in the killing of her daughter besides seeking compensation from the state government.

Kausar also sought the apex court’s directive to summon all official records on the killings, apprehending that these might be tampered with in the state government’s custody.

A Gujarat police team had shot dead the 19-year-old girl from Thane and her associates Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani on June 15, 2004, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

The state police later claimed that the four planned to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.