Ahmedabad: In a breather to controversial Gujarat IPS officers D G Vanzara and P P Pandey, a special court today granted them conditional bail in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter killing case observing prosecuting agency CBI has not denied IB's version that Ishrat and others had terror links.

Ishrat Jahan
 
Special CBI judge K R Upadhyaya allowed the bail applications of Pandey, an officer of Additional Director General of Police rank who has since been suspended, and Vanzara, after placing stringent conditions for their release.

In two separate orders granting conditional bail to the officers, the court observed that "Intelligence Bureau (IB) had in its affidavit last year before the Supreme Court stated that the four persons (killed in the encounter) had nexus with terror groups, which was not denied by the CBI."

There were 14 persons involved in the encounter, but the charge sheet had named only seven persons, the court said finding faults with the charge sheet filed by CBI in the encounter case.

The court also considered that Vanzara has been in jail for almost eight years and the trial will go on for a long time. It observed that Vanzara had not tried to tamper with the evidence or influence witnesses in the case so far. CBI in its charge sheet had said the encounter was a joint operation between Gujarat Police and Intelligence Bureau.