Centre 'misusing' IB for political gains: BJP

Against the backdrop of CBI issuing summons to a senior IB official over the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, BJP today accused the Centre of misusing the intelligence agency for "political gains", saying it could hurt national security.
"BJP has cautioned repeatedly that under the Congress-led UPA, the misuse of the Central Bureau of Investigation is rampant. We fear the Intelligence Bureau too is being misused by the UPA government," party spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said here.
She said IB shares critical intelligence with the states and an outcome of such a work arrangement was seen on 15 June 2004, when 4 terrorists including Isharat Jahan and Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh were killed. Gujarat police acted on IB information about their movements.

"...In 2010, media reported that David Headley, the brain behind the Mumbai attack implicated Ishrat as a fideyeen of the LeT. Strangely, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the UPA government denied these media reports," she said.
Referring to summons to a senior IB officials by CBI in the encounter case, she said a CBI inspector will now go into all the factors leading to IB's sharing of information with the state police.
"There is now an environment of trust deficit among the intelligence and security agencies of the country...For serving short term political agenda, issues of national security are being exposed.

"Attributing political motives or tweaking the prosecutions' stated positions which are based on evidence and facts of a case can compromise our national security itself," she said.
She claimed IB is being made to withdraw affidavits from courts as and when a new Home Minister takes over.