Ahmedabad: Gujarat’s former Deputy Inspector General of Police DG Vanzara told a special court that the CBI wanted to arrest then Chief Minister Narendra Modi and then Minister of State for Home Amit Shah in the Ishrat Jahan fake shootout case.
Arguing for Vanzara in a discharge petition filed in the CBI court presided over by J.K. Pandya, his counsel VD Gajjar claimed that though the Central Bureau of Investigation intended to arrest Modi and Shah, “fortunately” it did not happen.
While Modi is now the Prime Minister of India, Shah is the President of Bharatiya Janata Party.
Vanzara, who is out on bail in the case, had earlier submitted in the same court that Modi was secretly questioned by the case Investigating Officer when he was the Chief Minister.
The CBI had given a clean chit in 2014 to Shah on grounds of “insufficient evidence”.
In June 2004, Mumbai-based 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan, her friend Javed alias Pranesh, and Pakistani nationals Zeeshan Johar and Amzad Ali Rana were gunned down by a team of Vanzara’s men in a gun battle on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
Ishrat Jahan and her friends were dubbed terrorists out on a mission to assassinate the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi. However, subsequent CBI investigation concluded that the shootout was fake.
Vanzara’s lawyer on Tuesday claimed that the charge-sheet against his client in the case was “concocted” and that there was no prosecutable evidence against the former police officer.
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