Verma not to assist CBI in Ishrat case at this stage

"Verma has written a letter to the Director, CBI expressing his inability to join the probe at this stage, as he had met with an accident and doctors have advised him a complete bed rest," Yogesh Ravani, who is representing CBI in the high court said.

"He has also forwarded a copy of his letter to the Registrar General, Gujarat High Court, in which, he has expressed his regrets not to join the probe as assured and sought time till he recuperates from the health problem," Ravani said.

Following the court's direction to the state government to make Verma's services available to CBI for its probe, had on July 13 assured the HC that he will join the probe from today.

But the next day, on July 14, he fell down in his bathroom and suffered a fracture in left femur bone.

Verma was a member of the SIT, constituted on the directives of the High Court, to find out whether the Ishrat Jahan encounter was genuine or fake.

He was the first one to file an affidavit in the High Court saying the encounter was "fake". Later, the court transferred the case to CBI.

In its letter of June 8 this year, the CBI had requested the state government to depute Verma for six months to assist the central agency in probing the encounter case of 2003, in which, Mumbai girl Ishrat Jahan with Javed Shaikh and two others, were killed in an encounter by Gujarat police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad city.