Finally, after 17 long years of ordeal of facing prosecution, being jailed and humiliated for faithfully performing their duty of nuetralising and gunning down four dreaded LeT terrorists Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar at Ahmedabad in 2004, the Gujarat cops were vindicated by a Special CBI court in Ahmedabad on Wednesday.

The special CBI court Judge, VR Raval gave a verdict saying that there is nothing on record to suggest that Ishrat Jahan and three others who accompanied her were not terrorists.

The Special CBI court also discharged the remaining three policemen including Inspector General of Police G L Singhal in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

The court also said that there is no evidence to suggest that the encounter of the four LeT terrorists was fake. The judge stated, the accused Gujarat policemen were just discharging their duty of neutralising deadly terrorists and there is no evidence to impute any other ulterior motives to the case. The judge said, “The act which is alleged to have been done by the accused was in discharge of their duties or purported to be in discharge of their duties.”

Earlier, in 2018, the then Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad City, PP Pandey was discharged. Then in 2019, the former IG, DG Vanzara and NK Amin were discharged and now the CBI special judge Vipul R. Raval discharged IPS officer GL Singhal, retired cop Tarun Barot and SRPF commando Anaju Chaudhari.

Significantly, with this discharge order, all six-accused policemen (out of a total of 7 policemen) who were initially arrested and charge sheeted by the CBI court have been discharged. As the proceedings against J G Parmar was abated following his death in September 2020.

This discharge order means now the trial in the matter comes to an end if the CBI does not appeal against this judgement. The CBI is unlikely to appeal against these trumped up cases, as did not appeal against the discharges of four other officers earlier.

Ishrat, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra near Mumbai, was killed on June 15, 2004 along with Javed Shaikh, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, was killed in an encounter by Gujarat police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The police claimed they were terrorists who had plotted to to kill then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

A few days later, in July 2004, Lahore based Ghazwa Times carried a story where the LeT claimed that Ishrat Jahan was one of their operatives.

But just sometime later a huge cabal of pseudo-secular gang along with their Islamist friends as conspired by the Congress led UPA government at the centre, started a narrative of a young innocent “Bihar ki Beti” who was bumped off in a staged encounter to create a myth that the then CM Narendra Modi faced death threats from dreaded Islamist terrorists.

Sonia Gandhi led Congress and her NAC kitchen cabinet did not leave a stone unturned to fabricate a narrative by planting false evidences and using outlandish speculations as proofs of fake encounter of innocent young girl. While they could never explain what was a young girl from Mumbra doing with known Pakistani individuals and terrorists like Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana at the crack of dawn in the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

The UPA with all the anti-Hindu international support did manage to pull some strings even in the judiciary by trying to foist false allegations on honest policemen who were just doing their duty. There was an effort by the UPA government to get the retired IPS officer and former CBI chief to make an investigation on the lines to declare the encounter fake and implicate the honest police officers for murder.

RK Raghavan refused to get into such sham investigative commissions for which he was pilloried by jihadi minded people like Teesta Setalvad; and his name was sullied by all and sundry from the Congress party.

The main was to fix all honest police officers who were very effective at tackling jihadi terrorism in Gujarat. The UPA government under the directions of their Congress honchos just wanted to portray “Saffron Terror” and how police were targeting innocent Muslims when Hindus are responsible for terrorism.

The whole idea was to malign the police force and Hindu organisations, so that the UPA can happily promote jihadi terrorists and terror in India.

This judgement proves the fact that how much ever people try to obfuscate the truth, ultimately truth prevails and proves the fact that Ishrat Jahan was a terrorist as claimed by LeT themselves and no ‘innocent Bihar ki Beti’.

The central government and Gujarat government should pay compensation to the police officers who suffered a lot of monetary and mental trauma due to fake cases foisted on them by vested interests. People like Teesta Setalvad and other UPA ministers like P Chidambaram should be booked for foisting false cases on honest police officers and demoralising security forces while emboldening jihadi terrorists.

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