Even as the din over the Ishrat Jahan encounter case continues, there may be more for the Gujarat government to answer. This time on the encounter of 20-year-old Sadiq Jamal, who was handed over to the Ahmedabad Crime Branch by the Mumbai police's suspended encounter specialist, Daya Nayak.

Mumbai-based journalist Ketan Tirodkar, who had handed Jamal to Nayak, reiterated to Newsline on Thursday that he did so only because Nayak wanted an encounter stooge to oblige the Gujarat Police.

On January 13, 2003, Jamal, a Gujarat riot victim from Bhavnagar, was gunned down by the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch in Naroda. The police claimed Jamal was a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative on a mission to assassinate Narendra Modi, L K Advani and Pravin Togadia.

Tirodkar said: “When I had gone to Dubai, I came across Jamal. He used to work in Tarik Parvin's office, and had lost his relatives and house in the riots in Gujarat. He held Modi responsible for his losses, and asked me to help him take up his case with the Gujarat Human Rights Commission. Since he had returned to Gujarat and then came to Mumbai, I told Daya that I had found someone who may fit the bill.”

“Daya told me that we needed to do this to earn favours, so that, if necessary, we could prevent the arrests of some IPS officers who would soon get implicated in the Telgi scam. On January 11, a team of the Ahmedabad police posing as rights officials came to the city, and Nayak handed Jamal to them at the Borivili National Park,” Tirodkar alleged. He added that one of the officers in the team was D G Vanzara. “Two days later, I came to know that Jamal had been killed.”

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