Ahmedabad: Suspended ADGP rank officer P P Pandey who was granted bail by a special CBI court today in connection with the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, walked out of Sabarmati jail here after spending 18 months behind bars.
However, another IPS officer and former Gujarat ATS chief D G Vanzara, who was also granted bail in the same case, has to spend some more days in the Sabarmati Central Prison pending a legal formality concerning a Mumbai CBI court. Vanzara has been in jail for eight years.
“Pandey was released from the prison at around 3:30 PM. However, Vanzara is not released yet. He may have to stay in jail for some more days. We will release him only after we receive the order from Mumbai CBI court as he was granted bail by that court earlier in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case,” said Superintendent of Sabarmati Central Prison, R S Bhagora.
Vanzara's advocate V D Gajjar said he will be released after completion of the legal procedure in the Mumbai court. “Vanzara was granted bail in Sohrabuddin encounter case in September 2014 by the Mumbai CBI court. As he was in jail in Ishrat case as well, the order of the Mumbai court could not be executed,” Gajjar said.
He said the order of Ahmedabad CBI court will be presented before the Mumbai court in the next two days. “First, the order of Mumbai court will be executed, then those papers (of bail) will be put before Sabarmati jail authorities and then he (Vanzara) will be released,” Gajjar said, adding the entire legal procedure will take time of three to four days for completion.
Pandey was a Joint Commissioner of Police and Vanzara the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in the city crime branch, when Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old college student from Mumbra near Mumbai, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat police on the outskirts of the city on June 15, 2004.
Gujarat police had then claimed the deceased were members of Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba and were on a mission to assassinate the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
