Sadiq Jamal encounter case: 5 Guj cops held by CBI

The policemen, who were produced before a special CBI court, were immediately sent to judicial custody.

The CBI today also filed the charge sheet against eight accused in the case, including Dy SP Tarun Barot, for the charges under sections 120b (criminal conspiracy), 114 (abetment), 345 (illegal confinement), 365 (abduction) and 302 (murder) of IPC.

The CBI had arrested Tarun Barot on September 25 in this case, who had been later sent to Sabarmati Central jail here.

The CBI called DySP J G Parmar, Police Inspectors G H Gohil and R L Mavani, Head Constables Ajaypal Singh and Chatrashingh Chudasama at Gandhinagar for their interrogation and later arrested them.

In the evening, when all of them were produced before the special CBI court, the agency did not seek their remand and instead submitted the charge sheet in the case.

This is the first charge sheet in the case, filed against five cops arrested today, besides Barot and yet-to-be arrested retired cops I A Saiyad and K M Waghela.

Since Saiyad and Waghela had not been arrested yet, the CBI has requested the issuance of Non-Bailable Warrant(NBW) against these accused.

Former scribe of a Mumbai-based tabloid Ketan Tirodkar was the first one to be arrested in the case and who is now out on bail, has not been named in the charge sheet. Tirodkar was granted bail on October 11 on the basis of CBI failed to file charge sheet against him within the stipulated timeframe.

Sadiq Jamal, a resident of Bhavnagar, was killed in an alleged fake encounter by Gujarat police in Ahmedabad on January 13, 2003.

The genuineness of the encounter became an issue after Tirodkar filed an affidavit before a court in Mumbai that he was witness to Jamal's hand-over to Gujarat police by the "encounter specialist" Daya Nayak of Mumbai police, a few days before the alleged encounter.

In last June, the High Court had ordered a CBI probe following a petition by Sadiq's brother Sabir Jamal.