Parikshita Rathod's initial probe was full of lapses, reveals CBI.
IPS officer Parikshita Rathod — who was the first investigating officer in the Ishrat Jahan encounter — had passed the buck for her lapses and omission in the investigation on to her (then) seniors, DG Vanzara and PP Pandey. CBI had found that she had neither collected the call data records (CDR) of the police officers nor seized their weapons to prepare a ballistic report.
The statement revealed that she was dependent on forensic experts to guide her as to whether the weapons of the cops involved in the encounter should be sent for the ballistic report. Rathod had told CBI that she was not even aware of the guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to be followed after the encounter.
Asked about the lapses in the probe, Rathod had said that Vanzara (then DIG of the Detection of Crime Branch) and PP Pandey (then joint commissioner of police) had told her that there was no need to collect any documents as the cops (who are now accused) were a witness to the encounter, which according to Rathod’s report was genuine.
Despite being the investigating officer, she had told CBI that she was not able to personally keep an eye at the scene of crime during the initial work of preparing the inquest and panchnama of the scene of the crime. The CBI had found that some unauthorised police personnel had handled the documents that they should have not.
The CBI had also found that Rathod had not bothered to question the intelligence input given by the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB), Ahmedabad, despite its details being mentioned in the FIR filed at the DCB. She had blatantly declared a yellow powder as an explosive substance, which was later on during the investigation by the Special Investigation Team, found that it was a normal chemical powder.
Rathod had even failed to seize acupressure seat accessories from the car as well as its keys, which were visible in photographs recovered later by IPS officer Satish Verma in course of the investigation.
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