The petitioners have contended that the Gujarat high court cannot hand over the investigation of the encounter case to the SIT which was constituted by the Supreme Court to investigate 10 cases arising out of the 2002 riots.
A petition was filed in the Gujarat high court on Friday for a review of the court’s earlier order handing over the investigation of the Ishrat Jahan encounter case to the SIT constituted by the Supreme Court.
The petition was filed by Shamima Kausar, mother of Ishrat Jahan, and Gopinath Pillai, father of Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai. Ishrat and Javed were killed along with two of their friends by the sleuths of the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) in an encounter in 2004.
The petition was filed by Mukul Sinha, counsel for Kausar and Pillai. The petitioners have contended that the Gujarat high court cannot hand over the investigation of the encounter case to the SIT which was constituted by the Supreme Court to investigate 10 cases arising out of the 2002 riots.
The petition says that only the Supreme Court had the authority to hand over a case to the SIT and another court cannot hand over any investigation to it. The application also says that the Ishrat Jahan encounter and the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter were nearly identical. And as the Supreme Court had handed over the investigation of the Sohrab case to the CBI, the Ishrat case, too, should be handed over to the same agency to bring out the truth.
A week back, a division of the high court comprising justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari had handed over the investigation of the Ishrat Jahan encounter case to the SIT. The probe team headed by former CBI chief RK Raghavan had been asked to file its report within three months.
The bench had ordered fresh probe by the SIT because Shamima Kausar and Gopinathan Pillai had raised doubts about the genuineness of the encounter, and demanded a CBI inquiry into the incident. It may be mentioned in this context that on Thursday the Supreme Court had expressed surprise over Gujarat high court’s decision to transfer the Ishrat Jahan encounter case to the SIT.
“How can the high court refer that case to the SIT?” a special Supreme Court bench headed by Justice DK Jain had asked.
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