Ahmedabad : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday filed a second charge sheet in Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case against former Intelligence Bureau (IB) special director Rajinder Kumar and three officers slapping murder and conspiracy charges on them, but did not name former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah who was questioned by the agency in the case.

Notwithstanding denial of sanction to prosecute the officers by law ministry, the CBI named Kumar, a 1979-batch IPS officer who retired last year, and P Mittal, M K Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede. They have been charged under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy), murder, wrongful confinement, kidnapping, wrongful concealment. Kumar has been additionally charged under Arms Act with CBI alleging that he had provided arms to the accused on 14 June 2004, a day before the encounter took place.

The CBI alleged in its supplementary charge sheet that Kumar, who was the then joint director of IB, handed over arms and ammunition to G.L. Singhal of Gujarat police who passed the weapons to Tarun Barot through Nizamuddin Sayeed. These arms and ammunition were used in executing the crime.

The name of Amit Shah, a close aide of chief minister Narendra Modi did not figure in the charge sheet despite allegations made against him by Singhal.

CBI sources said that the matter was still under investigation and also mentioned that the agency was filing the charge sheet without any sanction of prosecution by the law ministry.

The agency has also requested the court to slap an additional charge under Sec.193 of IPC against retired deputy superintendent of police J.G. Parmar (already charge-sheeted).

This section deals with punishment for intentionally giving false evidence in any of a judicial proceedings, or fabricating false evidence for the purpose of being used in any stage of judicial process.

The CBI alleged that Parmar had concealed the fact that he had kept the car with him in which the four—Ishrat Jahan, Javed Sheikh alias Parnesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar—were killed.

CBI counsel Ejaz Khan told the additional chief judicial magistrate that the IB officials had conspired to eliminate the four.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, claimed that with CBI not naming Amit Shah in its charge sheet in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, Congress’ “malicious" campaign against the former Gujarat minister of complicity in the case “stands demolished".

The opposition party, however, raised the sensitive issue of senior intelligence officials involved in covert operations against terror being subjected to criminal prosecution and sought a debate on it as this will dissuade them from taking initiatives in their fight against terror.

“Today the CBI did not find any evidence against Amit Shah in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and consequently he was not named in the charge sheet," BJP’s deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

“For the last so many years, Congress party, both in Gujarat and at the national level, had undertaken a malicious, motivated and systematic campaign against Amit Shah of complicity in the Ishrat Jahan case. That campaign stands demolished today and the truth triumphs," he said.

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