The CBI today charged former Special Director in the Intelligence Bureau Rajinder Kumar with murder and criminal conspiracy in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case but left out Amit Shah, a close aide of Narendra Modi, who was under the scanner in the case.
Shah, who was Minister of State for Home during the sensational killing of Ishrat, a girl from Mumbra near Mumbai, and three alleged LeT activists in June 2004, is an accused in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case.
The CBI went ahead and filed the charge sheet against Kumar and three other IB officers despite law ministry's denial of sanction to prosecute them.
Besides Kumar, a 1979 batch IPS officer who retired last year, those named in the charge sheet are P Mittal, M K Sinha and Rajiv Wankhede.
In the supplementary charge sheet, Kumar has been charged under sections 302 (murder), 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), 364 (kidnapping in order to murder), 346, 364 & 368 (wrongful confinement) of IPC, besides sections 3, 25 (A) and 29 of the Arms Act.
Identical charges have been levelled against other three IB officers barring that of murder.
In the charge sheet filed in the court or Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate H S Kutwad, who took cognizance of the charges, CBI has said the IB officers had conspired to eliminate the victims, kidnapped them and held them in illegal confinement before the killings.
It said Kumar had supplied arms and ammunition used in the crime to another accused IPS officer Girish Singhal to be handed over to Deputy SP Tarun Barot.
The agency has also requested the court to slap an additional charge under Section 193 of IPC against retired Deputy Superintendent of Police J G Parmar, already charge sheeted in the case.
This section deals with punishment for intentionally giving false evidence in a judicial proceeding or fabricating false evidence for the purpose of being used at any stage of judicial process.
The CBI alleged that Parmar had concealed the fact that he had kept the car with him in which the four -- Ishrat Jahan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar -- were killed.
