Probe junks FSL charges against SIT

SIT member and Joint Commissioner of Police Satish Verma and ACP V R Tolia had raided the FSL premises on March 8 and seized a hard disk reportedly containing photographs related to the encounter.

FSL later lodged a police complaint alleging Verma and Tolia had “forcibly”seized data from its premises and “misbehaved” with the FSL officials and spoke to them in a “threatening” manner.

ACP M V Maheta,who conducted the inquiry on the police commissioner’s orders,said: “We submitted the report recently. The detailed findings are confidential but we can confirm that SIT did not commit any offence while seizing the data from FSL.”

Police officers who were part of the inquiry said the FSL had been hiding the hard disk so far from the investigators. They said the SIT came to know about the existence of some photographs when they them tagged with the petitions filed by the families of Ishrat and Javed,who was also killed in the encounter. SIT members then enquired with the Ahmedabad Crime Branch,but that too did not help.

During the probe,the FSL’s Deputy Director,S G Khandelwal,and an officer,B K Mistry,were questioned but they remained silent on the complaint of “misbehaviour”.

Sources said SIT officers first enquired about the hard disk with FSL and asked its officials if they still had it. The FSL was evasive after which Verma raided its premises,they said.