CBI court nixes plea for further probe

AHMEDABAD: A special CBI court on Thursday turned down an application demanding further investigation into specific aspects of the 2003 Sadiq Jamal Mehtar encounter case.
Special judge K M Dave rejected the plea filed by Sadiq’s brother, Shabbir Jamal, on the grounds that the investigation is already under way and it can neither monitor the investigation nor restrict the duration of the probe. The court order was silent on the inaction on part of the CBI in this probe for the three years, said advocate Shamshad Pathan, who represents Shabbir in this case.
This application was filed four years ago.The CBI probe has not inched further since. After the arrest and chargesheet was filed against eight cops in this case in 2012, there has been no progress, the petitioner claimed before the court and sought directions to the CBI to investigate certain aspects of the case.
Pathan said a further probe was sought to find the motive for killing the youth from Bhavnagar, because the investigation conducted was silent on why crime branch cops had claimed that Sadiq had come to kill the then chief minister Narendra Modi, when the youth was actually killed in police custody.
Further investigation was also demanded into the role of senior officers like D G Vanzara and P P Pandey and their political masters – and the role allegedly played by Modi and then junior minister Amit Shah apart from the Central IB’s special director Rajinder Kumar.
One of the points raised in the application was why Sadiq’s name emerged in an intelligence input for the second time in 2012, though Bhavnagar SP Anupam Gehlot had already given inputs to the agency that he had nothing to do with disruptive activities.
The application also sought a further probe into the role played by Mumbai police and intelligence officers there on the basis of the statement of an IB officer, Gururaj Savadatti, that Sadiq was detained and kept in Mumbai before he was handed over to Gujarat Police. Moreover, further investigation was also sought into who planted the country-made firearm on his body after his murder.