Ahmedabad, February 6
The Central Bureau of Investigation today charged IB’s retired special director Rajinder Kumar and three other officers with conspiracy and murder but let off Narendra Modi’s close aide Amit Shah in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case.

Shah’s name was not mentioned in the supplementary chargesheet filed in the special CBI court in spite of allegations levelled against him by a former police officer.

The CBI had questioned Shah, former minister of state for home, in the case following allegations by former Superintendent of Police GL Singhal that the encounter was staged at his behest.

CBI sources said sparing Shah in the supplementary chargesheet did not mean there was no case against Shah. A fresh chargesheet could be filed if anything concrete emerged against him.

The 1979-batch IPS officer Rajinder Kumar, who at the time of the encounter in June, 2004, was in charge of the IB in Ahmedabad, was found by the CBI to be main conspirator behind the killing of Mumbra (Mumbai) college girl Ishrat Jahan.

Pranesh Pillai, alias Javed Sheikh, believed to be her boy friend, and two Pakistan-based alleged terrorists Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were also killed in the fake encounter near Kotarpur on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The chargesheet suggested that three other IB officers, then posted in Ahmedabad - P Mittal, MK Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede - were also part of the conspiracy.

The four have been charged with criminal conspiracy, murder, kidnapping, wrongful confinement and wrongful concealment. Rajinder Kumar has also been charged under the Arms Act.

The CBI claimed the arms and ammunitions placed on the bodies of the victims were provided by the then IB chief to the Gujarat police through a police constable, Nizamuddin Sayeed.

The constable has already given a confessional statement to the CBI that he had brought the weapons from the IB office and handed these over to the then police inspector Tarun Barot. Barot has already been arrested and chargesheeted in the Ishrat Jahan case.

CBI sources said the supplementary chargesheet against the IB officers was filed despite the denial of sanction to prosecute the officers by the Union Law Ministry.

The CBI has also requested the special court to slap an additional charge under Section 193 of Indian Penal Code against retired Deputy Superintendent of Police JG Parmar for giving false evidence.

Parmar is claimed to have concealed the fact that the car in which Ishrat and others had travelled to Ahmedabad two days before the encounter was planted at the scene after the four were killed.