On Tuesday, a special CBI Court in Ahmedabad discharged 2 Policemen accused in the Sadiq Jamal Mehtar encounter case of 2003, observing that there was nothing on record to support allegations of their involvement, marking the first discharge in the case.

According to the CBI, the accused Policemen — RL Mavani & Ajayapalsingh Siyaram Yadav — were part of the “encounter team & present at the spot of encounter”. The court said that they were part of a “disciplined force, where seniors are not accustomed to hear ‘no’ from the mouth of staff on duty”.

The 2 accused were facing charges of criminal conspiracy, wrongful restraint, wrongful confinement, kidnapping or abducting in order to murder, kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly & wrongfully to confine person, murder & abetment when offence was committed.

Discharging Mavani & Yadav, the Court said, “…There is nothing on record to support the allegations of involvement of these two applicants from start to finish… If there is nothing on record with regard to the presence & involvement of present applicants then they cannot be taken as conspirators. There is nothing to show that they have committed any overt act with knowledge or have tacitly consented to the object of detention & killing of Sadik…”

The Court relied on fifty prosecution witnesses’ statements as well as the FIR filed by the crime branch in the case. The FIR noted that J G Parmar (then police inspector, who later died) fired five rounds & A I Saiyed (then police inspector) fired 6 rounds on Sadiq.

“As per the FIR, these two applicants (Mavani & Yadav) have done nothing during these crossfires. It has not been investigated that at that time, these two applicants were armed with weapons or not… Their mere presence at the place of encounter, that too, on obeying the order of senior officer, is not sufficient to charge them for murder…,” noted special CBI Judge Bharat Ambalal Dave.

Sadiq (28), from Bhavnagar, was killed on the intervening night of January 12 & 13, 2003, at Naroda near Galaxy Cinema, after an intelligence input forwarded by the Gujarat Police linked him to Salim Chiplun, an aide of gangsters Anees Ibrahim (gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s brother) & gangster Chhota Shakeel.

The alert said that “Dubai-based” Sadiq was sent by terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba to kill then deputy prime minister LK Advani, then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and VHP leader Pravin Togadia. 

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