The unseemly triumphalism with which the Congress has handled the alleged fake encounter of Mumbai girl Ishrat Jehan and her three companions – smuggler Javed Sheikh and Pakistanis Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar – has so muddied the waters that the case can no longer be limited to the Gujarat High Court’s mandate of establishing whether the encounter was genuine or fake.
Motive is the key ingredient of any murder investigation. By uncovering a credible motive to establish that one or more persons had a reason to kill another person (or persons) and benefitted from the death(s), the police and prosecution establish circumstantial evidence to make a case. The availability of direct forensic evidence naturally makes a case tighter, but in the absence of motive, it is almost impossible to make a case hold up in court.
In the case of Ishrat Jehan and her companions – who were killed by police officers in an allegedly fake encounter – it prima facie appears that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has got the wrong end of the stick.
To begin with, nowhere in the world does a politician under perceived threat ‘sanction’ the elimination of his/her would-be assassins. The protection of a protectee is the mission of those charged with this responsibility, and they are fully empowered to do so. It is absolutely inconceivable that the Gujarat Chief Minister, the Prime Minister, or any other protectee would supervise his own security! This is a function of State institutions.
In this respect, the conclusion of Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate SP Tamang (2011), that the police officers behind the alleged encounter wanted to ‘please’ the Gujarat Chief Minister is simply ludicrous and deserves to be dismissed with contempt.
This brings us back to the reason why intelligence agencies were monitoring the activities of a group described by David Coleman Headley as “the Ishrat Jehan module”. The term suggests that Ishrat Jehan was a far more important person in the group than hitherto suspected, and this point deserves more detailed investigation or sharing with the public if such information is already available, as hinted by former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Ajit Doval.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh’s request that Union Home Minister SK Shinde clarify the differing versions being put out by the IB, CBI and NIA, is the first hint that the Government has woken up to the gravity of the situation and may execute a subtle retreat. Alternately, it could let the case fall apart in court. While we cannot foresee the state of things to come, some tentative points can be made.
The pursuit of Ishrat Jehan and her companions (the court will decide whether the nature of the encounter) was initiated by the Intelligence Bureau, and not by mid-level cops of a State Government. Hence, the headquarters would have informed the Gujarat Government about the possible movement of four persons from Mumbai to the State; and on that basis the State Police were put on alert.
IB chief Asif Ibrahim was forced to become proactive in this case because the high decibel campaign suggested that an officer posted in a State was sharing intelligence directly with the political and/or police establishment there, instead of reporting to his bosses at headquarters. This casts aspersions on the character of the impugned officer, and makes a mockery of the manner in which the IB functions. Both are intolerable, and realisation on this score is dawning in New Delhi. This is reminiscent of Rahul Gandhi’s threat to file defamation suits against journalists reporting his takeover of the assets of the National Herald and associated journals, only to retreat after a brainstorming session with his fire fighters.
Operationally, the lead role in this story belongs to the IB, and the organisation seems to have stepped in to contain potential damage from inconvenient facts that the accused police officers could bring up when defending themselves in court.
Both CBI and the NIA will have to explain the specific operational roles played at the time of the encounter by the then IB director KP Singh; counter terrorism in-charge Nehchal Sandhu (now deputy national security advisor); and internal security advisor and former IB chief MK Narayanan (now Governor, West Bengal). All three men would have to be in the know of the IB warning to all States on April 22, 2004, that Hindu nationalist leaders, including LK Advani, were likely terrorist targets.
Coming to the Pakistani-American David Headley, he has confessed his role in the terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 and is in US custody, in a Chicago jail. His testimony to officers from the NIA in 2010 was voluntary, and he told them that Ishrat Jehan had terrorist links. Headley reportedly said that senior Lashkar e Tayyeba (LeT) commander Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi had told him in 2005 of a failed terror operation in India, in which “Ishrat Jahan and those assigned with her had died”. The words “those assigned with her” clearly suggest that Ishrat was no innocent abroad. The NIA should have asked Headley what more he knew about Ishrat.
The FBI also shared its interrogation report of Headley with the IB, which shared it with the NIA and leaked some portions to the media. But later the NIA removed the paragraphs relating to Ishrat on the pretext that Headley’s comments are not legally admissible in any case other than 26/11, and because his account was based on second hand information and should be treated as ‘hearsay’. This is a lame excuse, given that the CBI is relying on ‘double hearsay’ to make its case against the Gujarat Police officers.
The Intelligence Bureau is adamant that Ishrat and her associates comprised a terror unit, and David Headley designated them as the “Ishrat Jehan module.” It is irrelevant what their actual target in Gujarat was; what is certain is that they had gone there on a mission. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reportedly informed the IB that she was a “female suicide bomber”. The unit was reportedly planning terror strikes on Gujarat temples including the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, which had been attacked in September 2002.
Given the manner in which the atmosphere has been vitiated in the past few days, it is time for the Union Home Ministry to release more comprehensive information on Ishrat Jehan, Javed Sheikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar. It must also urgently initiate steps to protect its top sleuths from public slander. If it weren’t so unfunny, the present controversy would make a fine episode of Keystone Kops.
Niticentral, 7 July 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/07/07/upa-must-come-clean-on-ishrat-jahan-case-100328.html