Suspended DySP Barot gets bail in Sadiq Jamal encounter case

A CBI court here today granted bail to a suspended Gujarat police official in connection with the 2003 Sadiq Jamal fake encounter killing case.

Special judge M M Gandhi granted bail to suspended Deputy Superintendent of Police Tarun Barot, the last accused in the case to be still behind the bars, on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh along with the two surety bonds of Rs 5 lakh each.

The court granted the bail on a condition that the accused will not enter Mumbai and Bhavnagar. It also directed Barot to surrender his passport to CBI and remain present in the agency's office after every fortnight.

With this order, all the accused police personnel in case are out on bail.

He was in jail since his arrest by CBI in September 2012 in connection with another fake encounter killing case of Mumbai college student Ishrat Jahan and three others.

However, he secured default bail in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case as the probe agency could not file charge sheet within the stipulated time period.

Barot had moved his bail plea before the special CBI court here in October last year and contended that the probe agency filed the charge sheet on December 21, 2012.

However, the prosecution in the court has not been progressing. The applicant (Barot) has been in jail for more than two years in the case for no reasons, the bail plea said.

CBI had opposed his bail plea and submitted he was involved in conspiracy behind the encounter. "The accused cop was involved in the conspiracy of the fake encounter about which the prosecution agency has given ample evidence," CBI counsel L D Tiwari had told the court.

Jamal, a youth from Bhavnagar, was killed in an alleged gunbattle with Gujarat police near Galaxy Cinema in Naroda here on January 13, 2003. Gujarat Police had claimed Jamal was a terrorist on a mission to kill some of the top leaders of the state.

The genuineness of the encounter became an issue after a former Mumbai journalist Ketan Tirodkar filed an affidavit before a court in Mumbai that he was witness to Jamal's hand-over to Gujarat police by 'encounter specialist' Daya Nayak of Mumbai police a few days before the encounter.

The High Court had ordered a CBI probe on a petition of Jamal's brother Sabir. The agency after investigations had filed a charge sheet in December 2012.

The charge sheet had named Barot, inspectors Jaysinh Parmar, I A Saiyad and Kishoresinh Vaghela, sub-inspectors Ramji Mavani and Ghanshyamsinh Gohil and constables Ajaypalsingh Yadav and Chhatrasinh Chudasama as accused.

Apart from criminal conspiracy and murder, they were also charged with wrongful confinement and giving false information regarding an offence committed.