A precedent that Intelligence Bureau can do without

AHMEDABAD: Implication of four Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers in the staged shoot-out like Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case has got wider ramification for the country. This is for the first time that any intelligence officer has been charge-sheeted for hatching criminal conspiracy to kill people and then brand the operation to be of national interest.
Former special director of the top central intelligence agency, Rajinder Kumar has been charge-sheeted for plotting murder with local cops and for supplying weapons to prove that the victims were terrorists.Three of his subordinates were found involved in kidnapping and forcible detention.
Advocate Shashad Pathan, who represents Javed Shaikh's father Gopinath Pillai, said, "No IB officer has been charge-sheeted anywhere in the country till date. Their involvement in killing people and branding them with definite purpose to fulfill a particular political agenda of a particular party is dangerous for the nation. And they had been doing all this in the name of national security."
The lawyer further said, "The IB officer has supplied weapons to Gujarat police. This is even more dangerous. Probe should be conducted into how come intelligence officers possessed arms and from where they used to procure guns like AK-56."
Advocate I H Syed, who represents Ishrat Jahan's mother Shamima Kauser, said, "This is a very serious matter. But law has prevailed finally. Justice is being done. However, the process not over yet."
Before the chargesheet was filed, Pillai had claimed that his son was an informer of Gujarat police and used to work for a senior IB officer. Kumar was posted here as top IB officer during the time of the encounter in 2004.
Like in the Ishrat Jahan case, role of IB sleuths including Rajinder Kumar is under scanner in the 2003 Sadiq Jamal fake encounter case as well. The investigations by CBI in this case have revealed that the Maharashtra's subsidiary intelligence bureau's Gururaj Savadatti had framed the Bhavnagar youth as Dawood Ibrahim's gang member and claimed that he was on a mission to kill chief minister Narendra Modi. This framing had taken place at the behest of a top D-Gang member.