Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Friday appointed 1981-batch Indian Police Service officer JV Ramadu as new chief of Special Investigation Team in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case after relieving IPS officer Satyapal Singh as the chief.
Observing that several witnesses in the case were retracting their statements, the High Court called it a "very serious" issue and fixed the next date of hearing on August 5.
The SIT, probing the 2004 police encounter of Ishrat Jahan and three others, had submitted a progress report to the Gujarat High Court on Thursday.
The report was submitted following directions from the division bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari at the last hearing.
The SIT last week reconstructed the encounter at the scene of offence near Kotarpur, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
The reconstruction was done for the second time with the help of forensic experts from All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Central Forensic Science Laboratory.
During the last hearing, Singh had requested to be relieved of the responsibility.
Among various reasons for quitting, Singh had highlighted the differences between the other two members of the SIT (Mohan Jha and Satish Verma).
Court then asked the Union government to suggest names of officers to replace Singh.
Ishrat, along with three others - Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar - was killed in a police encounter on June 15, 2004.
After the encounter, city crime branch claimed the deceased were Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists who had come to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
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