Ishrat Jahan Encounter Case

The Ishrat Jahan encounter case refers to the encounter killing of four people claimed to be Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operatives by the Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch on June 15, 2004. The victims included Ishrat Jahan Raza, a 19-year old college girl from Mumbai, and three men: Pranesh Pillai (alias Javed Gulam Sheikh), Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar. Multiple judicial inquiries by Indian authorities, in 2009 and 2011, concluded that the encounter was fake, and the victims were killed in police custody.

The encounter was carried out by a team led by DIG D.G. Vanjara, who was later jailed for his involvement in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter. The police alleged that Ishrat and her associates were LeT operatives involved in a plot to assassinate the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. Later, an investigation was launched into the allegations that Ishrat was killed in a fake encounter. In 2004, a Lahore-based publication affiliated with LeT claimed that Ishrat and her companions were operatives, but in 2007, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the political wing of the LeT retracted the statement as a "journalistic mistake", offering apology to Ishrat's family. After a long investigation, in 2009, an Ahmedabad Metropolitan court ruled that the encounter was staged. The decision was challenged by the Gujarat State government, and taken to the High Court. In 2010, some media outlets reported that the convicted terrorist David Headley had implicated Ishrat in terrorist activities in a statement given to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). However, the NIA called these reports as "baseless". After further investigation, in 2011, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) told the Gujarat High Court that the encounter was not genuine, and the victims were killed prior to the date of the staged encounter.