Controversial Gujarat cop DG Vanzara gets bail in Ishrat Jahan encounter case

A day after co-accused, suspended police official PP Pandey,  was granted bail by a special CBI court, controversial Gujarat police official DG Vanzara was on Thursday granted bail in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

The exact terms under which he was granted bail weren’t known immediately but an NDTV report said that the now-retired police official cannot enter the state of Gujarat.

Vanzara has been in jail since he was arrested by the state CID in March 2007 in connection with the alleged encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. When he was arrested, Vanzara was serving as Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) of Border Range.

He was later made an accused in the cases related to encounters of Ishrat Jahan, Tulsiram Prajapati, Sadik Jamal and others.

The CBI had opposed bail being granted to the retired police official on the grounds that it couldn’t be granted only because Vanzara had been behind bars for a long time. Prosecutor LD Tiwari argued that the Supreme Court had said in a similar case that grant of bail in such a serious and grave offence would be “an open challenge to the civil society”.

Vanzara’s in his plea had argued that he had been in jail for over seven years and his defence was that he was only following the instructions of his superior officials. Vanzara has said that his name was not in the original FIR but CBI vindictively chargesheeted him.

Mumbra-based college girl Ishrat, 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 15 June, 2004. According to CBI, it was a fake encounter while police claimed they were terrorists.

The retired police official had earlier been granted bail by the Bombay High Court in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case.

Vanzara joined the police force as a Deputy Superintendent of Police in 1980 and was promoted as an IPS officer in 1987. He served as Deputy Commissioner of Police of Ahmedabad Crime Branch and was later promoted as DIG. He has worked as DIG, Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) in Ahmedabad.

In May 2013, Vanzara resigned from the service and sent a letter to the Director General of Police in which he blamed former Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah for making him and other police officials “scapegoats” in fake encounter cases.

In the letter , Vanzara termed Narendra Modi, then the Chief Minister, as his ‘God’, who was working under Shah’s “influence”.

“The most notable part of the whole episode is that they (arrested policemen) are made to suffer in jails, in spite of the fact that they had been and are loyal soldiers of this government who fought incessant war against Pakistan-inspired terrorism…” he had said in his letter.

He was questioned by the CBI in connection with the letter but the investigating agency consequently said that it didn’t have adequate evidence against him in the Ishrat Jahan case. The BJP had claimed that Vanzara’s letter was the result of Congress’s manipulative politics including the misuse of the CBI.

Vanzara’s resignation letter was also rejected by the Gujarat home department. Vanzara retired from the force in May 2014 while in jail.