CBI court rejects plea to inspect 2nd Ishrat charge-sheet

IPS officer Satish Verma's first application for a copy of the charge-sheet was rejected; he then requested permission to inspect it

A CBI court today rejected IPS officer Satish Verma's plea seeking permission to inspect the supplementary charge-sheet in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate D R Vyas held in his ruling that Verma had no 'locus' (right) to demand inspection. Verma had not made it clear in his application on what grounds he wanted to see the charge-sheet, the judge said.

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This was Verma's second plea filed soon after the court rejected his first application for a copy of the charge-sheet.

He had said he wanted the copy for pursuing legal action against those named in this second charge-sheet.

When the court refused to give a copy saying it had not taken 'cognisance' of the charge-sheet yet, Verma requested permission to inspect it.

The trial of the Ishrat Jahan case is stuck for the last two years in the CBI court here for want of sanction by the Centre to prosecute the Intelligence Bureau officers named in the second charge-sheet.

The first charge-sheet, filed in July 2013, named seven police officers including IPS officers P P Pandey, D G Vanzara and G L Singhal. It said that the encounter, a joint operation of Gujarat police and IB, was fake.

The second charge-sheet filed in February 2014 names Special Director of IB Rajendra Kumar and three other IB officers.

Verma, at present chief vigilance officer at North Eastern Electric Power Corporation at Shillong, was a member of the SIT constituted by the Gujarat High Court to investigate the 2004 encounter in which Mumbra college girl Ishrat, Javed Shaikh, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an alleged fake encounter on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.