Ishrat case: Congress government watched terror plot bloom, alleges BJP

Levelling serious allegations against the Congress in the Ishrat Jahan shootout case, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday said the Congress almost connived to get a political rival eliminated.

"Here is a political rival, the then chief minister of Gujarat, whom the Congress could not face politically. So they quietly saw a terror plot bloom," said union minister Nirmala Sitharaman targetting Congress referring to ex-Gujarat chief minister and current Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The then union home minister gave two affidavits in the court. They tried to show as if there was no terror plot, as if there was no threat to Modi's life.

"By politicising the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, the Congress has undermined the national security. They have weakened the entire security network," Sitharaman said.

Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan and her three alleged associates Pranesh Gopinath Pilai, Amjad Ali and Jishan Johar were killed by Gujarat Police in an allegedly fake shoot-out on June 15, 2004.

Gujarat Police had described the four as Pakistani-controlled terrorists who came from Jammu and Kashmir to assassinate the then chief minister Narendra Modi.

In Feruary, Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Headley told a Mumbai court that Ishrat Jahan was a member of Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.