Caught on tape – Gujarat minister admits influencing Ishrat probe

A key aide to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who was then a minister of state for home, had told a closed-door meeting of confidantes on 19 November 2011, that he had tried to influence a police officer investigating the encounter killing of Ishrat Jahan and three other men in 2004 to go easy on the police officers involved in it.
“I had called up (investigating police officer) Satish Verma to my house despite knowing the dangers of it,” the then Minister of State for Home Praful Patel is heard saying in an audio recording of the conversation that one of the participants, police officer GL Singhal who is now an accused in the case, had secretly made. “I had spoken to him (Verma) for more than four hours and had told him to help these 18 persons (who were involved in the encounter).”
The audio recording is now in exclusive possession with TEHELKA. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has submitted these tapes to the trial court in a sealed envelope. The high court had in 2009 made Verma a part of a Special Investigative Team it set up to investigate the encounter. Two days after the meeting where the secret audio recording was made, the SIT filed its report before the court in which it concluded that the encounter was fake.
Besides Patel and Singhal, others in that meeting included Gujarat Advocate-General Kamal Trivedi; senior IAS officer and Modi confidante GC Murmu; Singhal’s lawyer Rohit Verma; then minister of state for law Pradipsinh Jadeja, another accused police officer Tarun Barot and the then Ahmedabad Crime Branch joint commissioner AK Sharma.
In the audio recording, Singhal is heard voicing concern that if the high court accepts the SIT’s report and orders for an FIR to be filed, then many police offices who had earlier given statements supporting the claim that the encounter was genuine might wilt. “We have done tremendous damage control in the past one year. They (SIT) have taken statements of 300 people but only 2 statements went against us. The remaining 298 statements remained consistent despite the fact that they were called several times,” Singhal says. However, if a fresh FIR is registered many of them will be rattled. Their confidence is very high but they may change if the SIT gets an option.” In another conversation, Trivedi and Murmu are heard discussing the Supreme Court bench and if it can be influenced.
The then law minister Jadeja tells the others in the meeting that Amit Shah, who was the minister of state for home before Patel but had to resign after being named in another encounter, was constantly following the case and is on the phone time and again. Further Murmu and Trivedi are heard trying to reach Narendra Modi on the phone to appraise him of the situation and details of the meeting
TEHELKA had in July broken the exclusive story that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was asked by the high court to prosecute the officers involved, would be interrogating IB director Rajinder Kumar for his role in the Ishrat Jahan encounter. The CBI filed its chargesheet in the case on 4 July.

Source: http://www.tehelka.com/tehelka-expose-validated-cbi-says-ishrat-jahan-encounter-fake/