New Delhi: Asserting that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA Government was misleading the nation over the Ishrat Jahan case, Congress leader P.L. Punia on Wednesday said that what matters the most is that it was a ‘fake encounter’, which has been proved during the probe.
“Ishrat Jahan’s encounter case pertains to 2004. The metropolitan magistrate had ordered a probe to ascertain if it was a fake or a genuine encounter. Then a High Court monitored SIT and CBI probe was ordered and it was found that it was a fake encounter. We are only concerned with that,” Punia told ANI.
“Now, it is being said that it was done to target a particular leader. They are trying to mislead people,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Congress will raise the Ishrat Jahan case in the Lok Sabha today.
Former home secretary G.K. Pillai had earlier alleged that former home minister P. Chidambaram ‘bypassed him’ and rewrote an affidavit submitted to a court on Ishrat Jahan, the 19-year-old student killed in an encounter in 2004.
Early on the morning of 15 June 2004, Ishrat Jahan, Javed Sheikh, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana were shot dead on the road leading to the Kotarpur waterworks on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
A magisterial inquiry, SIT probe and CBI investigation – all concluded that this was a fake encounter and the police claim of having fired at her in ‘self-defence’ was a lie.
Almost a decade after the fake encounter, in July 2013, a chargesheet was filed against seven Gujarat police officials and (in a supplementary chargesheet in February 2014) four Intelligence Bureau officials for the unlawful killings, abduction, criminal conspiracy etc. (ANI)