JOIN USLast cop jailed in Ishrat Jahan case gets bail
Deputy Superintendent of Police, N K Amin – the only accused left in jail in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, was granted bail on Friday by a special CBI court on grounds of worsening health and parity with the co-accused.
The court also accepted the defence argument that it may take a long time for commencement of trial in the case.
Amin, who is suffering from prostate cancer, was also granted bail on basis of parity with his co-accused and IPS officers D G Vanzara and P P Pandey, who were granted bail in the case in February.
The bail plea was allowed on a personal and surety bonds of Rs 2 lakh each. The court also ordered Amin to submit his passport and not leave India without prior permission while asking him not to make any attempt to hamper the investigation or influence any witness. He will also be required to appear before the CBI court every Thursday and be present during the trial.
Amin was holding the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police in the special branch at a time when encounter took place on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
Mumbai-based 19-year-old girl Ishrat Jahan, her friend Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh along with two suspected Pakistani persons Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were gunned down by the Ahmedabad city crime branch officials.
The Crime Branch had claimed that the four were Lashkar-e Toiba (LeT) operatives and had landed in Gujarat to kill the then chief minister Narendra Modi.
The CBI, in 2012, in a chargesheet claimed that it was an encounter orchestrated jointly by the Gujarat Police and the Intelligence Bureau and named seven Gujarat police personnel — G L Singhal, P P Pandey, D G Vanzara, N K Amin, Tarun Barot, Anaju Chaudhari and J G Parmar — for murder, criminal conspiracy and confinement of these four.
Amin, who is also an accused in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, was granted bail by Special Mumbai court in the case in March 2013.