CBI files chargesheet, 5 more cops held

The CBI on Friday arrested five police officers from Gujarat for their alleged role in the 2003 Sadiq Jamal encounter case and filed its first chargesheet naming eight policemen, including DySP Tarun Barot.

Others who are chargesheeted are DySP J G Parmar, police inspectors G H Gohil and R L Mavani, and head constables Ajaypal Singh and Chatrashingh Chudasama. They were arrested and produced before the special CBI court today and were sent to judicial custody since the agency did not seek their remand.

Two retired policemen, I A Saiyad and K M Vaghela, are yet to arrested. The CBI has requested the court to issue non-bailable warrant (NBW) against them.

Mumbai-based former journalist Ketan Tirodkar, who was the first to be arrested in the case, has not been named in the chargesheet. He was granted bail on October 11.

Earlier, CBI had arrested Barot after questioning him in its office at Gandhinagar on September 25. Barot had allegedly taken custody of Sadiq from Mumbai police's former encounter specialist Daya Nayak.

Mumbai-based former journalist Ketan Tirodkar, who was also arrested by CBI, had testified against Barot and Daya Nayak. The five police officers arrested today are also accused in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

The FIR filed by CBI in the Sadiq Jamal encounter case had also named jailed DIG D G Vanzara, who is an accused in the Sohrabuddin encounter case as well, former DGP K R Kaushik, serving IPS officer PP Pandey (now CID chief), Daya Nayak and Intelligence Bureau officer Rajendra Kumar.

Sadiq Jamal Mehtar, who hailed from Bhavnagar but lived in Mumbai, was shot dead by a Gujarat Police team near Galaxy Cinema in Naroda area of Ahmedabad in January 2003.

The Gujarat Police had claimed he was a Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist who was on mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi, BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani and Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi.

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