New Delhi: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court today rejected the discharge applications of two former policemen – D.G. Vanzara and N.K. Amin – in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case.Vanzara, who is currently out on bail, is one of the key accused in the encounter that was allegedly staged by Gujarat police and Intelligence Bureau personnel. Amin is a co-accused in the case. The two former officers filed their discharge applications two weeks after a CBI court in Ahmedabad discharged former Gujarat DGP P.P. Pandey in the case. The decision to discharge Pandey was controversial, and Ishrat Jahan’s mother’s lawyer Vrinda Grover had told The Wire then that “This discharge of P.P. Pandey is a signal that the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter and murder case is going the Sohrabuddin case route, where first all powerful accused were discharged and then witnesses turned hostile.”The court held that Vanzara played a “greater” role in the encounter and thus could not be treated at parity with Pandey, which was his claim. Amin, who retired as the superintendent of police, sought his discharge on the ground that the encounter was genuine and that testimonies of witnesses produced by the CBI were not reliable. Judge J.K. Pandya rejected both their pleas.According to the Indian Express, the court also asked the CBI whether it was planning to obtain the state government’s sanction and prosecute the two officers. Sanction under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is required for prosecuting a government servant.While the CBI has not approached the state government yet, it had in the past asked the Union Ministry of Home Affairs for sanction to prosecute for IB officers. Sanction was denied.Vanzara had claimed in his petition that the fake encounter case is “politically motivated… with a view to topple the democratically-elected (Gujarat) government, (and the) entire plot appears to have been deployed by the then central government (led by the UPA)…”A file photo of Ishrat JahanIshrat Jahan’s mother Shamima Kauser had challenged the former policemen’s pleas, and told the court that her daughter was “murdered following a conspiracy between high-ranking police officers and others holding powerful and influential positions”.She also said that Vanzara played a “direct and key role” in the conspiracy behind the “staged encounter”.Ishrat Jahan, a teenaged woman from Mumbra, was killed in June 2004 by the Gujarat police in an ‘encounter’ along with three other men. A magisterial enquiry, SIT probe and CBI investigation subsequently all concluded that this was a fake encounter and that the police claim of having fired on her in ‘self-defence’ was a lie. In July 2013, almost a decade after the fake encounter, a chargesheet was filed against seven Gujarat police officials including Pandey and Vanzara, and (in a supplementary chargesheet in February 2014) four IB officials for the unlawful killings, abduction, criminal conspiracy etc.Pandey was the first accused to be discharged in the case. Both the CBI and Ishrat Jahan’s mother Shamima Kauser had opposed his discharge. Two of the four IB officers accused in the fake encounter case – Rajeev Wankhede and Tushar Mittal – have also asked to be discharged, challenging the special CBI court order which took cognisance of a supplementary chargesheet and issued summons for their appearance.(With PTI inputs)