AHMEDABAD: In a major relief for retired senior cops D G Vanzara and N K Amin, the Gujarat government has refused sanction to prosecute them in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case after the special CBI court rejected the cops’ discharge application.CBI counsel R C Kodekar on Tuesday informed the special court about denial of prosecution sanction under Section 197 of the CrPC and placed a letter sent by the state government to the CBI in a sealed cover. The refusal of permission to prosecute the cops by the government suggests that it believes that Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana were shot dead on June 15, 2004 by the cops in the line of discharge of their duty.After the state government refused prosecution sanction to the CBI, both the cops requested the CBI court that the criminal case against them should be dropped. Their advocates sought the court’s permission to file applications for the same. The court has posted further hearing on March 26 in the case.The CBI has been maintaining that there was no requirement of prosecution sanction to try Vanzara and Amin because they are charged with murder and criminal conspiracy. A trial against them can be proceeded without such sanction.Pleading innocence, Vanzara and Amin had sought discharge from the case also on the ground of absence of criminal prosecution from the state government.The court had last year rejected the discharge pleas and asked the CBI to obtain the permission from the government to prosecute the cops. Accordingly, the CBI requested the state government to grant prosecution sanction.Retired DIG Vanzara and retired SP Amin were among eight police officials charged by the CBI in the Ishrat case. Former in-change DGP P P Pandey has been discharged by the court in this case.Earlier, the Centre had refused to grant prosecution sanction in this case for four Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials, including former special director Rajinder Kumar.Vanzara and Amin have been discharged in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case earlier by a Mumbai CBI court.After the shootout on June 15, 2004, the Ahmedabad crime branch had declared that a 19-year-old girl from Mumbra, Ishrat Jahan, and three Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives had come to Gujarat to kill then chief minister Narendra Modi to avenge the 2002 riots.

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