Satish Verma gets SC relief

AHMEDABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the Gujarat high court's direction to investigate the 1996 encounters that took place in Porbandar, when IPS officer Satish Verma was the SP there.
Acting on Verma's special leave petition against the HC order, a division bench of justices H L Gokhale and Ranjana Prakash Desai stayed the investigation, which is in its final leg because of the quick action on the part of the state government.
Verma claimed that the government suppressed material and the petition was filed to pressure him in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.
The case is pertaining to investigation in deaths of Jasu Gagan Shial and Aher Ranmal Ram in police encounter and Aher Narayan Jesti Bandhiya, who was found dead hanging on a tree beside a police station. The third person was on police remand then and allegedly committed suicide.
In April, the HC asked ADGP of CID (crime) to probe the case after the documents related to earlier inquiry set up by the HC in 1998 - and done by the then IGP Hiralal - were found untraceable.
Verma, who was in the line of fire in this probe, moved the SC claiming that the state government, cops and lawyers all suppressed material evidence. Just three days after the HC ordered an inquiry into missing documents, he provided Ahmedabad CP the copy. The documents were further supplied to all concerned authorities, but no official told the court that they existed.
Verma's counsel I H Syed contended that non-existence of inquiry report was projected by the government as non-compliance of the HC order, which was not the case and should not be the base for another investigation.
He also told the SC that the probe conducted by Hiralal had given a clean chit to him. The report was supplied to the HC, but it was lost and no effort was made to locate it.
Verma has elaborately told the SC how the administration took up this case immediately after he aggressively initiated probe in the Jahan encounter case. He alleged that this exercise was done with a vengeance and to pressure him in the Ishrat case.
Verma's petition stated that he was made a party in the proceedings in 1997-98, but in the present petition filed by Hiralal Shial, he was not made a party respondent so material evidence could be suppressed in a systematic manner.
In his petition, Verma has claimed that he was targeted by the government ever since the probe in the Ishrat encounter began. Officers like A K Sharma, who "engineered" a complaint against him in the probe, also conducted an inquiry into the missing documents and came up with false findings. He showed how the exercise was undertaken to discontinue the SIT probe after its final report was submitted in November last year.
Verma also mentioned the repetitive inquiry into the Gossabara RDX landing case and claimed, "Gujarat in the present times has developed a modus operandi of launching vindictive and unlawful acts of this kind by invoking help of amenable officers, thereby suppressing the lawful machinery of the state."