Ishrat Jehan and three others were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.
The Narendra Modi government has set up a committee to look into the issue of missing files in Ishrat Jahan case. A one-man committee, comprising Additional Secretary BK Prasad, will probe the issue of missing files -- related to the case of alleged fake encounter of June 2004, in which Ishrat Jahan was killed.
Last week, Union home minister
Rajnath Singh had told the Lok Sabha that key documents in the case have gone missing.
"Two letters from the then home secretary (G K Pillai) to then attorney general (late G E Vahanvati) in 2009 have gone missing. The then attorney general had vetted two affidavits regarding the case. Those are also not available," Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha.
The first affidavit had been filed on the basis of inputs from Maharashtra and Gujarat Police besides the Intelligence Bureau, which said the 19-year-old girl belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba, but this was ignored in the second affidavit. The second affidavit, said to have been drafted by the then Home Minister P Chidambaram, maintained that there was no conclusive evidence to prove Ishrat was a terrorist.
Without naming then home minister P Chidambaram, Mr Singh had said the affidavits were corrected on his intervention.
Mr Singh has accused the erstwhile UPA government of hatching a "deep conspiracy" to frame Mr Modi in the Ishrat Jahan case. He had claimed the Congress-led UPA government had done a 'flip-flop' on the links of Ishrat Jahan with terror outfit.
The move raised eyebrows in the Congress. Senior Congress leader Renuka Choudhary said, "Chidambaram himself have cleared this fact... In spite of this, if the government wants to do drama, then good luck to them."
The death of the teen in 2004 - along with Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar -- had generated a huge controversy. The Gujarat police had said they had landed in Gujarat to kill the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Recently, convicted Lashkar terrorist David Headley, who is in a US prison, had told a Mumbai court that Ishrat was a terrorist of Lashkar e Taiba.