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New Delhi:
The
Supreme Court on October 6 yesterday issued notice to the Gujarat government on a
petition filed by
Shamima Kaushar - mother of Ishrat Jahan challenging the Gujarat High Court order that
stayed the report of Metropolitan Magistrate S.P. Tamang describing
the incident as fake encounter.
A Bench consisting
of Justices B.N. Agrawal and Aftab Alam, after hearing counsel
Kamini Jaiswal, also issued notice to the Centre and the CBI on the
petition filed by Shamima Kaushar seeking a direction to vacate the
interim stay order passed by the High Court on September 9.
The apex court sought the response of various parties
within four weeks.
Shamima Kausar
moved the apex court, challenging the Gujarat High Court's Sep 9
order suspending Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate M.P. Tamang's
report on the Ishrat Jehan killing. Tamang in his report questioned
the Gujarat police claim that Ishrat and others were planning to
kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The report also said the police
merely staged a shootout and killed them in cold blood.
Assailing the High
Court order, the petitioner said she had sought a CBI probe. The
High Court had committed a grave error in law as well as on facts in
arriving at a finding that the enquiry by Mr. Tamang into the
killing of Ishrat and others amounted to conducting parallel
proceedings and overstepping his limits, the petition said.
The special leave
petition said the High Court order was based on an erroneous
interpretation of Section 176 (1-A) of the Cr.PC as every unnatural
death “entails an inquest under Section 174 Cr.PC to ascertain the
apparent cause of death.”
An investigation
by the police and an enquiry by a judicial magistrate under Section
176 (1A) were distinct but simultaneous proceedings, and indeed the
“Cr.PC mandates the carrying out of these parallel proceedings.”
It pointed out
that the magistrate’s report was exhaustive, based on the evidence
made available to him by the police.
The special leave
petition said, “It
is a gross misrepresentation of the law and the constitutional
mandate for the Gujarat police to argue that the persons who were
killed in the so-called encounter on June 15, 2004, including the
petitioner’s daughter, are terrorists belonging to a banned
organisation called Lashkar-e-Taiba and, therefore, by implication
are not protected by the law of the land in the same manner as
ordinary citizens.”
Kausar also sought
the apex court's directive to summon all official records on the
killings, apprehending that these might be tampered with in the
state government's custody.
A Gujarat police
team had shot dead the 19-year-old girl from Thane and her
associates Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali
alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani on June 15,
2004, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
The state police
later claimed that the four planned to assassinate Chief Minister
Narendra Modi.
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