Mumbai: With Home Ministry Additional Secretary B.K. Prasad-led one-man inquiry committee in its report stating that four of the five missing documents continue to be untraceable, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju on Thursday alleged that former home minister P. Chidambaram attempted to give a clean-chit to Ishrat Jahan during the UPA rule.
“We have already got the reports by the one-man committee constituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs. We have seen the report and some of the important documents are still untraceable. And the intention is very clear. How these important documents are taken out of the records in the Home Ministry and why a hard core terrorist was declared as innocent through an affidavit?” he said.
“I can’t tell you what next steps would be. And it is not advisable to spell out at this point of time. But the steps taken by the UPA government, particularly during Chidambaram’s time, are very unfortunate. We will see what is to be done next,” Rijiju added.
Meanwhile, Chidambaram today accused Prime Minister Narebdra Modi-led government of creating a “fake controversy” over two affidavits filed in the Ishrat Jahan case and preparing a “doctored” report on the missing files.
“The news report published in the Indian Express today (16 June 2016) comprehensively exposes the fake controversy created by the NDA government on the two affidavits filed by the Central government in the Ishrat Jahan case,” Chidambaram said.
He further said Judge Tamang in his report on September 7, 2009, found that Ishrat Jahan and three others had been killed in a fake encounter.
The former union minister said he takes full responsibility for filing the ‘further affidavit’ which was absolutely the correct thing to do.
“The moral of the story is that even a doctored report (of the Inquiry Officer) cannot hide the truth. The real issue is whether Ishrat Jahan and three others were killed in a genuine encounter or a fake encounter. Only the trial of the case, pending since July 2013, will bring out the truth,” he added.
According to a report published in a daily, a Union Home Ministry official, who headed the probe into the missing documents in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, not only told a witness the questions he would ask but also suggested to him what answers he should give – that he had not seen any of the documents.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had earlier said many documents related to the preparation of the ministry’s second affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case are missing and an internal inquiry has been ordered. (ANI)