The Special Investigation Team probing the 2004 police encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others, along with forensic experts, on Thursday reconstructed the events that took place on the day of the incident at the original site near Kotarpur area of the city.
SIT chairman Satyapal Singh said that a eleven-member team from the All India Institute of Medical Science and Central Forensic Science Laboratory, New Delhi, was helping them in reconstruction and collection of the data that would be useful during investigations.
"We called Dr Rajendra Singh, director, CFSL, and Dr T D Dogra, head of the department of forensic medicine, who have come along with their team to reconstruct the series of events and collect data," Singh told mediapersons.
When asked why the team had conducted a similar exercise on April 17 this year, the SIT chairman said, "They have come on the request of SIT as the work could not be completed during the earlier reconstruction."
Singh, who had taken charge in June, has already expressed his desire to be relieved from the responsibility of SIT chairman before the Gujarat high court which is directly supervising the probe.
SIT members Mohan Jha and Satish Verma were present for the reconstruction, besides the entire team of the then city crime branch involved in the encounter, which described the situation they had faced seven years ago.
These officers included Superintendent of Police G L Singhal and Deputy Superintendent Tarun Barot.
The team began by studying the site and reconstructing the series of events that took place during the encounter as described in the FIR filed in 2004 by the city crime branch officials.
It examined the place where the weapons were found and where the car carrying Ishrat and others was when the bullets were fired at it, besides other parameters.
Ishrat Jahan, along with Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, was killed in an encounter on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
After the encounter, the city crime branch had claimed that the deceased were Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists who had come to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
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