Gopinathan Pillai, father of Javed who was shot dead in June ’04, seeks CBI probe; petition names Modi and Amit Shah as accused

THE State Government whose image has taken a nosedive in the wake of the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and the subsecuent murder of his wife Kausarbi, is waiting to face a near-similar situation next week. For, the father of another “encounter’’ victim has approached the Supreme Court, seeking a CBI probe into his son’s death.

Gopinathan Pillai, a resident of Alleppey district in Kerala, has alleged that his son Javed alias Praneshkumar Pillai was gunned down in a fake enounter along with three others in June 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The petition, filed through noted lawyer K K Venugopal, is scheduled for hearing before a two-judge bench comprising Justices Tarun Chaterjee and P K Balasubramaniam on July 30.

Venugopal’s junior Deepak Prakash told this newspaper that the petition is seeking a probe by the CBI into the extra-judicial killing of Javed. “We have made Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his Home Minister Amit Shah, besides seven police officials, including IPS officers D G Vanjhara and Rajkumar Pandian, as accused in the case,’’ said Prakash. Vanjhara and Pandian are already in judicial custody in the Sohrabuddin case.

Asked why Modi and Shah were made the accused, Prakash said that the cops, after the ‘staged encounter’ had claimed that Javed had planned to target Modi and senior BJP politicians and had come to Gujarat only for this purpose.

Speaking from his native village of Kottakkttuderi in Alleppey district in Kerala, Javed’s father Gopinathan Pillai told this reporter that Javed was picked up by Gujarat police from Ahmednagar town near Pune on June 11, 2004, and shot dead in Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. However, the police at that time maintained that Javed along with two Pakistani terrorists and one girl from Mumbai had come to Ahmedabad to target Modi and other senior BJP and VHP leaders.

Pillai said that neither the Ahmedabad Crime Branch nor Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation had so far given him the death certificate of Javed despite several efforts made by him. “I have received the post-mortem report but the details of injuries suffered by Javed and mentioned in separate four pages have not yet been given to me,’’ he stated.

“The details of injuries might nail the truth and expose the claims of the cops that Javed was killed in an encounter,’’ said Pillai, adding that, it was why the Gujarat government authorities were not making these documents available to him.

A poor farmer, Pillai said that he did not have means to move the Supreme Court but after publication in Malayalam newspapers of interviews of retired additional director general of police (ADGP) R B Sreekumar about Javed’s extra-judicial killings, several people from all over Kerala motivated him to initiate legal action in the matter and extended financial support.

He said he planned to visit Ahmedabad soon to make another attempt to procure the death certificate of Javed as also the four-page injuries report.

“I had been saying from day one that Javed was innocent. But no one listened to me. But the probe into Sohrabuddin encounter on the Supreme Court directive has exposed the claims of the Gujarat government,’’ he said.

Praneshkumar, a Hindu, had converted to Islam in Pune to be called Javed. He has left behind his Muslim widow and two kids.

Source by cities.expressindia.com