Ahmedabad : Vanzara said he had Modi’s nod to kill Ishrat: Gujarat cop

TNN

Ahmedabad, 05 July : The CBI chargesheet in the Ishrat Jahan case contains the testimony of a police witness who told a magistrate that he had heard DIG of crime branch, DG Vanzara, telling his junior officer G L Singhal about having obtained permission from chief ministerNarendra Modi and and then junior Gujarat home minister Amit Shah for killing her in a fake encounter.

Deputy superintendent of police in crime branch, D H Goswami, had given this statement under Section 164 of CrPC before the additional judicial magistrate, Esplanade Court, Mumbai. His statement is part of the annexures to the chargesheet submitted by CBI in the Ahmedabad court on Wednesday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ishrat Jahan

Despite this testimony, the chargesheet, according to sources does not name Modi or Shah as accused. Whether this is because the CBI did not find Goswami’s testimony credible or strong enough or because it wants to investigate the issue further and might include it in a supplementary chargesheet later is not clear.

In his testimony, Goswami said he had accompanied G L Singhal to the Shahibaug office of the crime branch in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2004, two days before the encounter in which Ishrat and three other alleged LeT terrorists were killed. He said ADG P P Pandey, D G Vanzara and IB officer Rajinder Kumar were already present there.

In his testimony, Goswami said he heard them talking about some LeT operation and Rajinder Kumar asking Vanzara to talk to the chief minister about it. Goswami quotes Vanzara as saying that he would talk to ’safed dadhi’ (white beard) and ’kali dadhi’ (black beard) — code names for Modi and Shah.

Goswami said he accompanied Singhal to the Shahibaug office again on June 14 at around noon, a few hours before the encounter. Vanzara handed over to them a written document which also mentioned the plan to kill Ishrat, apart from the three men. When Singhal objected to the plan to kill Ishrat, Goswami said he heard Vanzara saying that he had the approval of the political bosses.