New Delhi/Ahmedabad:
The CBI is prepping to charge one of the most senior officials in the Intelligence Bureau with conspiracy to murder 19-year-old college student Ishrat Jahan, who was shot dead in 2004 along with three other people near a highway in Ahmedabad.
CBI sources say Rajendra Kumar, currently Special Director with the Intelligence Bureau (IB), sanctioned that fake encounter. Investigators say they are trying to determine whether an AK-47 found at the location of the killings was furnished by him.
Mr Kumar was meant to be questioned by the CBI for a second time today, but his interrogation has been re-scheduled to Tuesday. Yesterday, Home Secretary RK Singh mediated a reportedly inclement meeting between the heads of the CBI and IB over the escalating case against Mr Kumar.
When Ishrat, who was from Mumbai, was killed with three others in Ahmedabad by senior police officers, Mr Kumar was Joint Director with the Intelligence Bureau in Gujarat.
The police claimed that the state's Intelligence Bureau had warned that the group was planning to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
During his first interrogation a few weeks ago, Mr Kumar reportedly told the CBI that the intel alert was genuine, and that he was not involved in the encounter. The Intelligence Bureau has backed him, claiming that there was enough information to suggest that Ishrat was part of a terror module that had been assigned by the Lashkar to carry out deadly attacks in Gujarat. The intelligence agency has however stressed that its job is to share information; it had no role in how the police acted on that information.
(Ishrat Jahan case: Why Intelligence Bureau says its alert was genuine)The Intelligence Bureau has objected to the CBI's interrogation of Mr Kumar, claiming that it sets a dangerous precedent because its members often work undercover and have sources who will dry up if intelligence officers are entangled in police cases.