Experts watch 2nd action replay of Ishrat killing

SIT chief Satyapal Singh and its other two members Satish Verma and Mohan Jha led an 11-member team of experts headed by Dr T D Dogra,head of department of forensic medicine at AIIMS,and Dr Rajendra Singh,director of CFSL in New Delhi.

Satyapal Singh had earlier informed the Gujarat High Court,which constituted the SIT,that he wanted to opt out of the SIT. Singh is waiting to be relieved.

Singh said the experts had come for a second reconstruction as they could not finish the work last time. SIT sources said that on April 17,they could not film the reconstruction.

On Thursday,experts reached the Kotarpur Waterworks near SVP International Airport for the reconstruction,which began at 11 am in the morning and got over at 4 pm. The SIT used the same blue Tata Indica car in which Ishrat Jahan and three others – Javed Pillai,Zeeshan Johar and Amzad Ali Rana – were travelling and were shot dead. The SIT had also brought the Maruti gypsy which was used in the encounter and belonged to N K Amin,the suspended police officer who is an accused in the 2005 Sohrabuddin encounter case.

SIT sources said the vehicles were stationed and officers involved were asked to take positions as per details recorded in the old panchanama documents of 2004,which were also brought to the spot. The entire exercise was videographed for use in the final report.

All the suspects in the encounter case except Amin were called for the reconstruction. The key suspects,DySP Tarun Barot and SP GL Singhal,were made to enact the scene by taking their claimed positions near the bushes across the Kotarpur Road from were they had claimed to have shot dead Ishrat and others.

Unlike the last reconstruction on April 17 when he used his revolver,Barot was not given any weapon to use this time. He was made to enact his position thrice and was grilled by forensic experts to ascertain his position,angle of fire and distance from Ishrat’s car. Singhal too was made to repeat the act several times over.

SIT officers said related documents,including maps and site plan,were handed over to the forensic experts in advance. The officers said that during the five-hour long reconstruction,the experts studied the encounter from all angles.

Nineteen-year-old Ishrat and three others were killed in an encounter on June 15,2004 at Kotarpur Waterworks. The Gujarat Police had claimed they were Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.