IB officials challenge summons by court in Ishrat Jahan case

Two Intelligence Bureau officials have challenged the summons issued to them by a magistrate's court here in the Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter case.
Special CBI judge J K Pandya will hear the IB officials' pleas on January 6.
The magistrate's court for CBI cases had last month issued summonses to central IB's special director Rajinder Kumar and officers M S Sinha, Rajeev Wankhede and T S Mittal, based on a supplementary charge sheet filed by the CBI naming them nearly four years ago.
Wankhede and Mittal, who worked as assistant central intelligence officers when the alleged fake encounter took place in June 2004, have challenged the summons on the grounds that the CBI hasn't received the sanction to prosecute them from the Union government.

The CBI has charged the four IB officials with murder, criminal conspiracy, illegal detention and kidnapping.
But all these years, no further action was initiated against them for want of sanction for prosecution.

When the CBI informed the magistrate about denial of sanction by the Union government, the court decided to issue summons to the four IB officers, who have never been arrested in the case.
The first charge sheet filed by the CBI in this case names seven Gujarat police officers, including IPS officers P P Pandey, D G Vanzara and G L Singhal, as accused. All of them are out on bail.

Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old college girl from Mumbra near Mumbai, her friend Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh and two others were killed in an alleged fake encounter by Ahmedabad police on the outskirts of the city in June 2004.