Ishrat Jahan Case: People are changing their stands, says Congress

The Congress Party on Friday passed the buck with regard to the Ishrat Jahan encounter case to officers were involved in the case did not show any decent previously and now are changing their takes.

"The incident happened twelve years back and there was no descent from any of the bureaucrats at that point of the time when the first affidavit was filed. All these controversies arose when the former home secretary made a statement which he did not do previously," Congress leader PC Chacko told ANI.

"Mr. G.K Pillai who was the home secretary at that time okayed the file, the file had passed through Mr. G.K pillai three times and he did not press his decent on the file. The affidavit at that time was prepared after the due process of formalities. Pillai's descending route was not there and even no officer from the department raised any query," he added.

Moving on, Congress leader PL Punia said that the NDA government is politicising the Ishrat Jahan case and that there is no two way about the fact that Ishrat was killed in a fake encounter.

"Metropolitan magistrate court of Ahmadabad, the SIT and the Gujarat high court stated that it was a fake encounter and the officers involved in the encounter were prosecuted under section 302," said Punia

"If any files are missing the government should order a probe and punish those who are found guilty but the Centre should not politicize the issue," Punia added.

The Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday accused the Congress-led UPA government of having indulged in a flip-flop on Ishrat Jahan's links with terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba and said the issue of terrorism shouldn't be politicised.

"Not only India, but the entire world is facing the menace of terrorism today. Any issue related to terrorism shouldnt be politicised. Be it the Ishrat Jahan case, or any other such case, there shouldn't be flip-flop by any government. But there has been a flip-flop by the previous government with regard to the Ishrat Jahan's case," he said in Parliament.

Singh said it is a conspiracy to frame people, as many documents on Ishrat Jahan are missing.

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.

Referring to the change in the Home Ministry's affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case that did not refer to her as Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while intervening in the motion of thanks for the President's address to Parliament told the Rajya Sabha, "In the process you unbarred the entire security apparatus of India because you wanted to fix a political leader. Some day an investigation will take place on how internal security was played with.