File photo of Ishrat Jahan

The Home Ministry is likely to deny sanction to CBI to prosecute four Intelligence Bureau officials, including its former Special Director Rajinder Kumar, in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter killing case.A final decision on CBI's request for sanction will be taken after a thorough examination of the documents provided by the investigating agency, a Home Ministry official said.The agency has sought sanction from Home Ministry to prosecute Kumar and three other officers -- P Mittal, MK Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede -- in connection with the case of the fake encounter killing of college student Ishrat, in which the charge sheet has been filed after completion of investigation.CBI has handed over to Home Ministry the documents sought by it to take a decision regarding the granting of sanction to the agency to prosecute the four Intelligence Bureau officials.Home Ministry had asked for the 'case diary' and the Superintendent of Police's final report before deciding whether to give the sanction to prosecute the IB officers.Home Ministry sources had said the ministry sought certain documents from CBI after stating that no sanction would be accorded without proper application of mind, for which the material available on record was required.Home Ministry and CBI were at loggerheads over the issue of sanction to prosecute the four IB officials with the former demanding the case diary before giving its nod even as the probe agency decided to seek legal opinion on the demand.According to the law, a case diary which is maintained by the Investigating Officer can be shared only with the court.Under the provision of Section 172 CrPC, every police officer conducting an investigation maintains a record in a prescribed format of the probe done on each day in a case diary.

These diaries are important records of inquiry carried out by an Investigating Officer. Any court may send for the case diary of a case under inquiry or trial in such court and may use such diaries, not as evidence in the case, but to aid it in such inquiry or trial.While IB, which comes under MHA, believes that the encounter -- in which 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan was killed along with three others by Gujarat crime branch in Ahmedabad in June 2004 -- was a genuine counter-terror operation, the CBI believes otherwise.