One of the petitioners in the Ishrat Jahan case, Gopinath Pillai, died today after a road accident in Kerala. Gopinath Pillai was the father of Pranesh Kumar Pillai, who, along with Ishrat Jahan and two others, was shot dead by the Gujarat police in 2004.
Gopinath Pillai, a retired teacher, was on his way to Kochi for a medical check-up on Wednesday morning when his Maruti car reportedly braked suddenly and was rear-ended by a truck. The car was wrecked and Mr Pillai, 77, was rushed to hospital with multiple wounds. He died this morning.
“The probe is underway. A case of accident was registered yesterday itself. We are probing all angles and can’t specify anything till the probe is over,” sources in police told NDTV.
Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old college student, Pranesh and the two others were shot dead near Ahmedabad in June, 2004. Gujarat police officers claimed that the four were Lashkar e Taiba terrorists who had planned to assassinate Narendra Modi, who was then Chief Minister of Gujarat.
This version was challenged in court by Gopinath Pillai, who demanded a CBI investigation.
The police said Pillai’s son Pranesh had changed his name to Javed Sheikh to marry a Muslim woman.
