Ishrat Jahan case: 5 latest developments

Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi on Friday denied that a senior official from his ministry allegedly tutored another government officer on how to answer questions relating to missing files in the Ishrat Jahan case, reported The Hindu on Thursday. 

Mehrishi was responding to allegations made by The Indian Express, in its news report published on the same day. According to the national daily, B K Prasad, the Union Home Ministry official who headed the probe into the “missing documents” in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, allegedly tutored a witness, Ashok Kumar, on how to respond when giving his statement as part of the probe.

According to the report, Kumar, currently joint secretary (Parliament, Hindi Division and Nodal Officer for monitoring of court cases) in the Department of Commerce, was director in the Internal Security division of the Home Ministry, which dealt with the Ishrat Jahan case, between March 1, 2011 and December 23, 2011.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said some documents had gone missing related to the case and had tasked Prasad, who holds the post of additional secretary (Foreigners), to conduct a probe.

In response to the news report, both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have issued statements and made allegations. 

Here are all the recent developments related to the Ishrat Jahan case:

1) According to the Indian Express report, Prasad told Kumar the two questions he would ask the latter as part of the probe and followed up by providing the answers Kumar could give. 

Prasad, while speaking to Kumar over the telephone, said that he would ask whether the latter had ever seen the documents in question and that Kumar should respond by denying having seen said documents, the report said. 

Further, the report said that Prasad told Kumar that the other question the latter would be asked would be whether anybody had given him the documents to be "kept separately". Yet again, Prasad, according to the report, followed up with a suggested answer — that Kumar should say that no one had given him the concerned documents.

According to the report, in response to an email questionnaire sent to him, Prasad denied having had such a conversation. Prasad, however, admitted to contacting various officers in connection to the probe, including Kumar. 

Prasad also claimed that he had conducted a “free and fair enquiry”. 

2) Former home minister P Chidambaram, who drew flak over the filing of two separate affidavits by the Centre in the Ishrat Jahan case, on Thursday said that the Indian Express report "completely exposed the fake controversy created by the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government".

Chidambaram also defended issuing the second affidavit and said that its contents, especially paragraphs two and five, were "absolutely clear and correct". He added that the news report vindicated his position on the affidavits.  

3) Even as the news report about the alleged coaching of the witness emerged, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju on Thursday alleged that Chidambaram had attempted to give a clean chit to Ishrat Jahan during the United Progressive Alliance rule.

"We have already got the reports by the one-man (B K Prasad) 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.

4) In the wake of the news report, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that the "missing documents" of the Ishrat Jahan encounter case amounted to "anti-national activity" and those involved will be punished.

Naqvi said, "All efforts are being made (to find out the truth about the missing papers). It's a criminal conspiracy and an anti-national activity. Anyone involved will not be allowed to go scot-free." 

5) The one-man enquiry panel, comprising only Prasad, probing the missing files related to the Ishrat Jahan case has concluded that the papers were removed knowingly or unknowingly or misplaced in September, 2009, a period when Chidambaram was the home minister.

Only one paper, out of the five documents related to the Ishrat Jahan case that went missing from the Home Ministry, was found, said Prasad in his enquiry report submitted to Mehrishi on Wednesday.