AHMEDABAD (TIP): Suspended Gujarat Deputy Inspector General of Police D. G. Vanzara, allegedly involved in four fake encounter cases and lodged in a Mumbai jail for nearly seven years, on September 3 tendered his resignation as an IPS officer accusing the Narendra Modi Government of framing police officials in encounter cases while protecting ruling party politicians close to the Chief Minister. A main accused in the chain of fake encounters in Gujarat, Vanzara released a 10- page letter of resignation. Vanzara was arrested by the Gujarat Police in April 2007 in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case and then picked up in July 2010 for the Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case and later in Ishrat Jahan murder case as well, besides in Sadique Jamal case.
In his resignation letter, Vanzara accused the State government of trapping the arrested policemen in various fake encounters and added that the, “Gujarat CID/ Union CBI had arrested me and my officers in different encounter cases holding us responsible for carrying out alleged fake encounters. If that is true, then the CBI investigating officers of all the four encounter cases of Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram, Sadique Jamal and Ishrat Jahan have to arrest the policy formulators also as we, being field officers, have simply implemented the conscious policy of this government which was inspiring, guiding, and monitoring our actions from very close quarters. By this reasoning, I am of the firm opinion that the place of this government, instead of being in Gandhinagar should either be in Taloja Central Prison at Navi Mumbai or in Sabarmati Central Prison at Ahmedabad.” Launching a blistering attack at Amit Shah, his co-accused in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, Vanzara claimed he had maintained his “graceful silence for such a long period” only because of his “supreme faith and highest respect” for Narendra Modi, whom he used to “adore like a God,” but added that his “God could not rise to the occasion under the evil influence of Shri Amitbhai Shah who usurped his eyes and ears and has been successfully misguiding him by converting goats into dogs and dogs into goats since the last 12 years.”
“His unholy grip over the State administration is so complete that he is almost running the government of Gujarat by proxy,” Vanzara alleged. “The resultant criminal negligence of this government on one hand and wilful acts of omissions and commissions by Shri Amitbhai Shah towards the fate of 32 jailed police officers on the other are so nauseating that it may take this government to the cremation ground sooner or later,” he added. “Hon’ble Chief Minister of Gujarat has very rightly been talking of repaying his debt which he owes to Mother India. It, indeed, is the sacred duty of every citizen to do it. But, it would not be out of context to remind him that he, in the hurry of marching towards Delhi, may kindly not forget to repay the debt which he owes to jailed police officers,” Mr. Vanzara wrote in his letter addressed to Additional Chief Secretary, Home. But Vanzara did not admit that the encounters were fake and said that the killings followed a “conscious policy of the government,” in the wake of rising Jihadi terrorism after the Godhra train burning and subsequent riots, when the government had adopted a “proactive policy of zero tolerance for terrorism” at the highest level.