The ghastly role of the Gujarat police in killing Ishrat Jahan and three others in a fake encounter has been revealed in the fresh FIR filed with the CBI by RR Verma, chairman of Guajrat high court-appointed special investigation team (SIT).

The most important fact established by the SIT is that 19-year-old Thane girl, Ishrat Jahan, had no terrorist links herself. Further, she was picked up, along with Javed Sheikh, from Vasad in Anand district two days prior to the fake encounter. The Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) team which picked them up from Vasad included NK Amin and Tarun Barot, says Verma's FIR.

Another victim of the fake encounter, the suspected terrorist Amjad Ali, was kept in illegal confinement at Arham Farm in Gandhinagar. This is the same farmhouse where Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife, Kausarbi, were confined by DCB sleuths before they too were killed in cold blood. The owner of Arham Farm, Raju Jeerawala, was arrested by the CBI in this connection but was later released on bail.

Ishrat Jahan, Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai and two suspected Pakistani terrorists, Amjal Ali Rana and Jishan Johar, were killed in the encounter by a DCB police team near Kotarpur waterworks early in the morning of June 15, 2004. The SIT, which was entrusted, by the high court, with the task of finding out the truth about the encounter, has concluded that the four were killed in cold blood.

After the encounter, there was much debate on whether Ishrat was a terrorist or not. But the Ishrat SIT found that she was not linked to any terrorist organisation.

However, She might have known about Javed's illegal activities, the FIR says.

In the FIR, the SIT chief has stated that Ishrat had travelled with Javed to Lucknow and Ibrahimpur (in Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh) and had twice visited Ahmedabad with Javed. "She may have understood that Javed was engaged in illegal activities before she joined him," the FIR says.

The FIR further says that the statement of Rashid [a witness] also indicated that she had knowledge of Javed's illegal activities before she joined him. "However, there is no evidence to indicate that she had any terrorist link herself," the FIR states.