JOIN USMumbai-based journalist Ketan Tirodkar has been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with Sadiq Jamal fake encounter case here on Thursday.
Tirodkar, who had earlier refused to cooperate with the CBI investigations, had to present himself before the Gujarat High Court following its order on Thursday.
The court then allowed CBI to take him to its office in Gandhinagar for questioning.
It is learnt that the journalist has been booked for being a co-conspirator in the encounter case.
Sadiq Jamal was killed in the wee hours of January 13, 2003 near Galaxy Cinema in Ahmedabad by the same group of police officers belonging to Ahmedabad Crime Branch who are now in the dock for the fake encounter of Shorabuddin Sheikh and his wife as well as Ishrat Jahan and three others.
The Ahmedabad Crime Branch had claimed that Jamal was in town on a mission to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. However, the first question on the killing surfaced as early as in 2003 when Tirodkar confessed before the special MCOCA Court that Sadiq was killed in a fake encounter.
Tirodkar, in his revelation, also admitted that Mumbai police’s encounter specialist Daya Nayak had handed over Jamal to Gujarat police on the request of a politician from the state.
Tirodkar had later told the media that Sadiq was handed over to a team of Gujarat Police including D G Vanjara by Daya Nayak at Borivili National Park on January 11, 2003, before he was killed. Twenty-year-old Sadiq had moved to Dubai after Gujarat riots in 2002 and later landed in Mumbai.