The families of Ishrat Jahan and Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai,the two of the four who were killed in the 2004 fake encounter,are happy that the probe has been handed over to the CBI. Ishrats family,which lives at Mumbra in Thane,has been pressing for a CBI probe ever since the encounter took place near Ahmedabad on June 15,2004. Her mother Shamima Raza had filed a petition in the Supreme Court requesting for a CBI investigation in the case. Shamima said,This was something we always wanted. We want the real truth to come out in the CBI investigation. We have full faith in it. Ishrats sister Mussarat said,We did not have trust in SIT earlier since they were also a part of the Gujarat Police. We feared it would leave out the policemen involved and just arrest junior officers. Javeds father Gopinath Pillai too welcomed the CBI probe. We had initially demanded a CBI probe but when SC did not grant the permission,we were disappointed. We did not expect much from the SIT but their report took me by surprise. I am happy with them too but the CBI would do a fair probe, he said. The High Court-appointed SIT had submitted its probe report to the court on November 21,stating that the encounter was staged by the Gujarat Police and that Ishrat and others were killed earlier. Mussarat said she hoped the CBI would accord priority to Ishrats encounter probe since it was different form other encounter killings in Gujarat. Ishrat was clean. In other encounters,victims ran extortion rackets and politics played a role,but Ishrat Jahans encounter was purely a case of policemen seeking attention from Chief Minster Narendra Modi for rewards, Mussarat said. CBI now has four encounters to probe Ishrats is the fourth case of encounter killing in Gujarat that the CBI will be probing. The central agency is already probing the encounter killings of Sohrabuddin and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati,besides the Sadiq Jamal encounter in which the victim was shot dead by police in Ahmedabad in 2003.
