Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court is hearing Additional DGP PP Pandey's plea seeking to quash an FIR filed against him filed by the CBI in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. On Wednesday, a single bench judge had adjourned the hearing after the CBI opposed it.
CBI lawyer Indira Jaisingh has told court that Pandey, as a law enforcement officer, ought to respect the summons. The CBI claims it has sufficient evidence against him.
According to the CBI, since a division bench was already hearing the encounter case, the plea should also come before the same bench. Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has intensified its efforts to arrest Pandey as it is finalising the chargesheet in the case, which is likely to be filed in a special court in Ahmedabad before July 4.
CBI sources said the agency is trying to locate Pandey who has been declared an absconder by the court on its request and is believed to be hiding. The sources said CBI is trying to question him before filing the chargesheet to elaborate his alleged role in the encounter.
The agency has formed a special team to track Pandey and arrest him to be questioned in this regard, they said. The FIR, filed by CBI in the case, alleged that Pandey provided "so-called crucial intelligence inputs" to fellow officers which said that Ishrat, a college student, and three others were LeT operatives and were on a mission to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Pandey, as the Joint Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad, was heading the crime branch when Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter allegedly with Gujarat Police on the city outskirts on June 15, 2004. He had denied the allegations against him and moved to Gujarat High Court seeking quashing of the FIR against him.
Pruthvi Pal Pandey, a 1982-batch IPS officer, who was declared an absconder by the CBI court here on June 21, has claimed in his petition that he had merely passed on the intelligence input that Rana, Shaikh and Johar were terrorists and were planning to enter the city to kill Modi.
(With Additional Inputs From PTI)
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