Ishrat case: IB officer won't be named in 1st chargesheet

New Delhi, July 1: Special director of Intelligence Bureau (IB) Rajendra Kumar will not be named in the first chargesheet to be filed by CBI on July four as the agency will be seeking more time from court to probe the conspiracy angle in the fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and others.

"We have promised the Gujarat HC that we will file a chargesheet on July 4 in this case and we will maintain our time limit. We will file a preliminary chargesheet," CBI director Ranjit Sinha told reporters on the sidelines of an Interpol conference.

The case pertains to killing of four people including 19-year-old Ishrat from Mumbra and the allegation is that the four were in detention of Gujarat Police before they were killed in a stage-managed encounter in 2004.

CBI was entrusted with the investigations of the case by the Gujarat HC and the agency managed to get one of the accused as an approver in the case, who named Kumar, a 1979 batch IPS officer posted as joint director of IB in Ahmedabad at that time.

The sources in the agency will seek more time from the court under 173 Criminal Procedure Code to probe conspiracy angle in the case.

The sources declined that CBI required any sanction to prosecute Kumar and said his role was being further probed in the case and that he may be called for questioning again. The senior IB officer will retire on July 31 this year.

Sinha said, "We have asked home ministry and Maharashtra government to provide security to our officers probing the case."

His remarks come in the backdrop of reports that the agency's Nagpur-based superintendent of police, Sandeep Madhukar Tamgadge, an IPS officer of 2001 batch from Nagaland cadre, has been receiving threats.

PTI