After new revelations, MHA dusts off 2009 Ishrat Jahan files

September 24, 2009: Pillai writes: “Clear copy is shown to HM”.

Notwithstanding the political slug fest over the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan, its trial is stuck for last two years in CBI court here for want of sanction from the Centre to prosecute IB officers who have been chargesheeted by the probe agency.

Citing file notings, senior government sources revealed that while the affidavit was changed by then home minister, former home secretary G.K. Pillai did not record any dissent that he was not consulted.

“First it was Lashkar-e-Taiba’s website, secondly it was David Headley’s statement and thirdly it was central government affidavit in the Gujarat High Court and Gujarat Police also said it. IB has said it. In spite of all these, they changed the affidavit”.

Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding the 2004 encounter took a fresh turn as another former bureaucrat in the home ministry questioned the need for a second affidavit.

“Gujarat government and Gujarat police were being humiliated in Isharat Jehan encounter case, so Chidambaram should face legal procedure in the same way that Gujarat police officials involved in the case faced”, Bitta said.

Mani suggested that Chidambaram was behind the decision to file the second affidavit. “He is a minister and he is competent to revise the affidavit and he did that”.

Top government sources also said that even though the circumstances leading to the amendments are suspicious, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not keen on any immediate action against anybody.

Mani has alleged that the changes in the second Ishrat Jahan affidavit “were made at the political level by the then UPA government” and that he was “tortured” to sign it. Pillai said that it was surprising to see that the minister, who is competent to revise the affidavit, was taking cover behind the home secretary.

The first charge sheet filed in July 2013 was against seven police officers, including IPS officers P P Pandey, D G Vanzara and G L Singhal.

The affidavit reached RVS Mani, an undersecretary in the home ministry, who filed it in court on September 30, 2009. I accept the responsibility for this affidavit. “There was no reason to doubt their inputs”.

Early on the morning of 15 June 2004, Ishrat Jahan (19), Javed Sheikh, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana were shot dead on the road leading to the Kotarpur waterworks on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The city crime branch had then said those killed in the encounters were LeT terrorists and had landed in Gujarat to kill the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.