Sadiq Jamal encounter: FIR filed against Guj, Maha cops

The move comes in the wake of the Gujarat High Court issuing directions to the city Crime Branch to lodge an FIR in the police encounter that took place eight years back, based on a petition by Sadiq's brother Shabbir Jamal Mehtar.

"An FIR has been filed into the encounter (of Sadiq) against police officials of Gujarat, Maharashtra and others," a Crime Branch official said today.
A copy of the FIR has been sent to the CBI as per the directions of the High Court, he added.

Sadiq was killed in a encounter with Crime Branch officials near Galaxy cinema in Naroda area of the city on January 13, 2003.

After the encounter, the Crime Branch officials had claimed that they had intelligence inputs that Sadiq was a noted criminal in the league of persons like Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel and had planned to kill BJP leader L K Advani, Chief Minister Narendra Modi and VHP leader Pravin Togadia.

This is the third police encounter which has been declared as fake and its probe transferred to CBI. The other two cases include the 2005 encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and the killing of his wife Kausarbi and his close aide Tulsiram Prajapati in a similar case in 2006.

On June 16, High Court judge Justice M R Shah had ordered a CBI probe into the Sadiq encounter, implicating certain high ranking police officers, including suspended IPS officer D G Vanzara who is one of the key accused in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
The court found Shabbir's apprehension that his brother Sadiq was killed by high ranking Gujarat police officers in a fake police encounter "reasonable," considering probe was on against senior officers in three other fake encounter cases.

It also said that a probe by an independent agency like CBI was needed to avoid apprehensions of bias, as high ranking police officials were associated with the encounter.

Sadiq's brother Shabbir in his petition in the High Court had claimed that the killing of his brother was a "cold-blooded murder" and a "conspiracy" hatched by Vanzara and IPS officer P P Pande, who was heading the city Crime Branch in 2003.

Last Saturday, Shabbir had submitted an application with the Crime Branch to register an FIR against the police officials involved in the encounter. The Crime Branch officials had reportedly told him that they would file an FIR only after receiving the copy of the HC order.