Ishrat Jahan was linked to terror groups: Former bureaucrat

In more trouble for Congress, former joint secretary AK Jain on Wednesday said that there was complete mistrust between the then Gujarat government led by Narendra Modi and Manmohan Singh-led Central government when the Ishrat Jahan encounter took place.

New Delhi: In more trouble for Congress, former joint secretary AK Jain on Wednesday claimed that there was complete mistrust between the then Gujarat government led by Narendra Modi and Manmohan Singh-led Central government when the Ishrat Jahan encounter took place.

Shedding more light on Ishrat and her accomplices, Jain said there was no doubt that they had links with terror outfits and were on a mission to kill VIPs.

Jain further said that there was no doubt about the genuineness of the inputs provided by the Intelligence Bureau on Ishrat and her accomplices.

In an exclusive interview to news agency ANI, Jain, who was the Joint Secretary (JS) in-charge of monitoring communal-related matters across the country, said, "I was JS in-charge of the communal situation, and had obtained reports from the IB and the state government. The reports were clear that outfits, to which Ishrat belonged to, had an association with terror groups."

Jain, who was posted in the Home Ministry in 2004, was responsible for collating facts on Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

He revealed that a Commission of Inquiry was proposed by the central government on the post-Godhra situation.

"References also came from the National Advisory Council (NAC) to tweak the report of the commission, which I did not support," he alleged.

The former bureaucrat's revelations come at a time when the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are engaged in a war of words over the alleged flip-flop on the affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, with BJP accusing the Congress of having attempted to frame Narendra Modi and Amit Shah in the sensational encounter killing and demanding a probe into the issue.

The trigger for the battle was the interview by RVS Mani, the then Under Secretary in the Home Ministry, who had filed the two affidavits. In the interview, Mani alleged that he was tortured to implicate senior IB officials in the case to project the encounter killing of Ishrat and other three LeT terrorists in Ahmedabad in 2004 as fake.

Mani suggested that Chidambaram was behind the decision to file the second affidavit. He alleged that the then SIT chief, a CBI official, was after him and an attempt was made to question the quality of professional inputs by the intelligence agencies on Ishrat and other terrorists.

It also came on a day when two former home secretaries claimed the second affidavit was filed in the Supreme Court at the behest of the then Home Minister P Chidambaram.

Former home secretary GK Pillai had said that Congress leader and former minister in UPA government P Chidambaram had bypassed him and got the affidavit on Ishrat Jahan changed.

Last month, Pakistan-American terrorist David Coleman Headley had claimed that young Mumbai women Ishrat Jahan was an Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative.