Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court said on Friday it will deliver its order on Additional DGP PP Pandey's plea seeking quashing of FIR against him in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case on July 1. The CBI argued against Pandey's plea saying the three people killed in the encounter were already in police custody earlier.
Pandey was Joint Commissioner Police at the time of Ishrat's killing. But he maintains that he had no knowledge of the conspiracy and that he had merely passed on the intelligence to his colleagues.
Countering Pandey's argument that his role in the case was limited to providing intelligence inputs, Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising claimed that Pandey was the 'mastermind' behind the killing of the four people.
"He is the mastermind behind the whole encounter. He was a conduit... He received inputs, passed it to his subordinates and arranged everything... In fact he was in total control of the operation. He actually acted as Rambo," she alleged.
She 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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