The top man at the CBI told NDTV today that the investigation into the 2004 shooting of college student Ishrat Jehan will expand soon to look at whether the 19-year-old and the three men killed with her had terrorist links."We are trying to establish their nationalities," CBI Director Ranjit Sinha told NDTV.The group was killed on the outskirts of Ahmedabad by senior police officers of the city's Crime Branch who said the foursome was readying to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).Nine years after the encounter, the CBI last month presented its first chargesheet in the case, outlining the evidence against the seven policemen it has charged with murder and destruction of evidence. The agency was unequivocal in its assessment that the encounter was "staged" and that Ishrat and her companions had been killed "in cold blood" in a joint operation between Gujarat's Intelligence Bureau and the state police.The chief minister's party, the BJP, has excoriated the CBI and the government for allegedly suppressing information about Ishrat's possible allegiance to the Lashkar. The party says that the CBI is being used by the government to undermine Mr Modi and his administration.

In ads placed in local newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, the CBI offered a five-lakh reward for information that could help establish the identity of two of the three men shot dead with Ishrat. The Gujarat Police had earlier said the pair was Pakistani, and affiliated to the Lashkar.The Intelligence Bureau has attacked the CBI for stating that one of its senior officials, Rajendra Kumar, helped organize the fake encounter.