7 years on,SIT reconstructs encounter

Barot was asked to explain his shooting position after which he repeated his shot thrice. Later,a CFSL official told Barot that if this was the distance at which he had shot Ishrat from the corner of the road,then the bullet should have hit the roof of the vehicle and not at the person sitting inside the car.

Barot — who was police inspector in the Ahmedabad crime branch at that time and now ACP in the Special Operations Group — and ATS Superintendent G S Singhal were the two senior policemen along with a host of constables and sub-inspectors who re-enacted the encounter of Ishrat and three others. Singhal had then supervised the encounter as the ACP (crime).

N K Amin,who was ACP (crime) at the relevant time and part of the encounter team,was the only officer missing during the reconstruction. Amin is currently lodged in the Sabarmati Central Jail in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.

The SIT began the exercise from the office of Ahmedabad Crime Branch where the officers had reportedly received a tip-off from the State Intelligence Bureau that Ishrat and three others had reached Ahmedabad allegedly as LeT operatives to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The team reconstructed a series of events on their way to the exact encounter spot at Kotargam,and parked an Indica car adjacent to the road divider where Ishrat and Javed Sheikh’s car was originally apprehended by the police. A police van was placed at a distance of about 10 steps on the same road.

The SIT based their reconstruction on an FIR filed by the Crime Branch in 2004,which states how the encounter took place after the then JCP (crime) PP Pandey received a tip-off from the State IB. The reconstruction was filmed and photographed from various angles. The SIT had questioned Barot and Singhal on January 11,2011. According to SIT officials,Barot had fired at Ishrat along with three other policemen. The experts will examine old photographs saved in the hard disk that was seized from the Ahmedabad FSL and prepare a report of the reconstruction.

Among the police officers named in the alleged fake encounter case are P P Pandey,the then DCP (crime) D G Vanzara and Ahmedabad police commissioner K R Kaushik. However,they were not present at the encounter site. Pandey is now CID (crime) chief,Vanzara is in jail in the Sohrabuddin case and Pandey has retired. Singhal was earlier questioned in the Sohrabuddin case as well as the 2002 riot cases by the SIT.