Ahmedabad, May 3 (IANS) A special CBI court on Tuesday allowed Gujarat Police's in-charge Director General of Police P.P. Pandey and IPS officer G.L. Singhal, both accused in the Ishrat Jahan case, to travel abroad.
Seeking permission to visit Britain, US, France and Canada for a month between May 20 and June 20, Pandey had requested the court to modify the bail condition which barred him from leaving India.
He had sought relief on the ground that he wanted to visit his son and his family in Britain and also needed to go to US, Canada and France to complete his doctoral research.
Singhal had also sought temporary modification of bail for a month to visit different universities in the US for further studies of his daughter.
The CBI had during the last hearing opposed Pandey's plea saying his long absence would delay the trial of the case, in which he was an accused on bail.
The designated CBI court, however, allowed both the officers to travel abroad.
Pandey, Singhal as well as IPS officer N.K. Amin, retired IPS official D.G. Vanzara and three other policemen, were charge sheeted in the case related to the alleged staged shooting of 19-year-old Mumbai girl Ishrat Jahan, her friend Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai and two Pakistani nationals in June 2004. The case is at present pending before a local court.
Pandey, a 1980 batch officer, was arrested in July 2013 in the case and remained in jail for nearly 19 months till February 2015, after getting bail from the CBI court. His passport is in the court's custody.
