New Delhi/Ahmedabad:
While the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) says that it has proof that one of the most senior officials in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Rajendra Kumar, was involved in the 2004 fake encounter of 19-year-old college student Ishrat Jahan, the IB continues to defend him.
Ishrat was killed on June 15, 2004 along with three others - Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar - while they were travelling in a car Ahmedabad.
Mr Kumar was a Joint Director with the Intelligence Bureau in Gujarat when the encounter took place. The police had claimed that the state's IB had warned that the group was planning to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Here's why the IB says its alert was genuine:
- The IB insists that Rajendra Kumar had provided genuine inputs about a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) module's plan to assassinate Mr Modi.
- The Intelligence Bureau says it was able to penetrate the module through a letter it recovered from a Poonch-based LeT operative Eshan Illahi, who was shot dead by the J&K police.
- The letter reportedly helped the IB get details about a car (Blue Tata Indica MH 02 JA4786) that the module was using to move around. Ishrat and four others were travelling in this car on the outskirts of Ahmedabad when they were killed by the police.
- The IB says the LeT had written about Ishrat's encounter on its website but later removed the post. Using its cyber wing, the bureau has pulled out the post as a proof of its claim.
- It also says 26/11 conspirator David Coleman Headley had told his interrogators that Ishrat was an LeT cadre.
- The IB says it had tracked the movement of the module and provided the CBI wire taps and eyewitness accounts as proof of the involvement of Ishrat and the three others who were killed in the encounter.
- The bureau also argues that its officer did not take part in the encounter or asked the Gujarat Police to kill the members of the module.