Sitting on terror suspect’s plea lands police in soup

Failure to act on an application by July 11, 2006, train blasts accused Ehtesham Siddiqui has landed Antop Hill Police in trouble.

Siddiqui has sought probe into an alleged fake encounter of a suspected Pakistani terrorist in 2006.

In reply to an RTI query, he has been told commissioner of police Satyapal Singh has ordered a departmental inquiry by Crime Branch Unit IV into the episode.

Last year, Siddiqui had filed a PIL for a probe into the matter. However, he withdrew the application in July after a division bench of justices Sharad Bobde and Mridula Bhatkar directed him to go through the right channel.

Siddiqui then sent a 10-page letter to Antop Hill police marking copies to the metropolitan magistrate court and commissioner of police, Mumbai.

However, his lawyer Abdul Wahab Khan claimed, police refused to act on his application.

In the letter sent from Arthur Road Jail, Siddiqui has claimed that suspected Pakistani terrorist Ali was interrogated by ATS at its Kalachowkie office a day before he was shot in Wadala in August 2006. He claimed Ali was interrogated by former Gujarat ATS chief D G Vanzara, who was allegedly in the city at the time.

Vanzara is an accused in the alleged Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case and is lodged in Taloja prison.

Siddiqui, who was picked up around the same time, said he was lodged in the same lock-up as Ali.

He filed an RTI application seeking records of phone calls between Vanzara and Mumbai police officers in August 2006, but the information was denied.

Siddiqui pointed out that no police officer was injured in the encounter of Ali to claim it could be fake and demanded an investigation.

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