New Delhi, Feb 11 (
The Congress on Thursday questioned the attempts to use Pakistani-American terrorist-turned-approver David Coleman Headley's court testimony to justify the "fake" Ishrat Jahan encounter which it said were "not permissible by law".
"The fundamental question remains whether Ishrat Jahan and her three accomplices were killed in a fake encounter in 2004. A probe into the encounter case found it to be fake," Congress leader Manish Tewari said.
Nineteen-year-old Ishrat, a student of Khalsa College in Mumbra, was killed along with Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai from Kerala as well as two alleged Pakistanis Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana on June 15, 2004, on Ahmedabad's outskirts for allegedly conspiring to kill the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.
"There are two separate issues concerning the encounter. First, whether Ishrat Jahan and her accomplices were Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives or not? In the light of Headley's statement, if the government wants to investigate the matter further with regard to their credentials, there is absolutely nothing which stops it," Tewari said.
"But the fundamental question remains: Whether Ishrat and her accomplices were killed in a fake encounter or not?" Tewari said.
The Congress leader said a metropolitan court in Ahmedabad first concluded that "it is a staged encounter - in other words - a fake encounter."
The matter later went to the Gujarat High Court and it monitored the investigation for two years.
Tewari said after the probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, it also "came to the conclusion that the encounter was indeed a fake encounter". He said the CBI had filed the charge sheet against accused police officials in a court of law.
"Therefore, if the current government or the BJP wants to use Headley's testimony to justify an encounter which a court-monitored investigation has found to be fake, then, I am afraid, neither the law and nor jurisprudence allows it," he said.
Tewari said even if a person is a terrorist, he needs to be arrested and needs to be brought to justice like parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
"But to try and justify a fake encounter, I am afraid, is something which the law does not permit," the Congress leader said.
Headley said on Thursday that Ishrat Jahan was a member of the women wing of terror outfit Laskhar-e-Taiba. "Jahan was a LeT member," Headley said while deposing before special TADA Judge A. Sanap.
Bihar BJP leaders target Nitish over Ishrat Jahan case
After Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley's revelation that Ishrat Jahan was a Lashkar-e-Taiba member, BJP's leaders in Bihar on Thursday demanded Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's apology for describing her as a "daughter of Bihar".
Union minister Giriraj Singh said Nitish Kumar had played with national security for the sake of vote bank politics regarding Ishrat Jahan's alleged encounter on June 15, 2004.
After Headley's revelation of the truth, Nitish Kumar should come forward to apologise to the country, the BJP leader said.
"Jahan was a LeT member," Headley deposed before special TADA Judge A. Sanap in Mumbai on Thursday. He said Ishrat was a member of the women's wing of the terror outfit.
BJP national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, a former MP from Bihar, also said those who earlier called Ishrat Bihar's daughter should now make their stand clear after Headley's deposition in court.
Congress should apologise to Ishrat encounter heroes: BJP
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday demanded an apology from the Congress hours after Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist-turned-approver David Coleman Headley revealed that Ishrat Jahan was a member of the terror outfit.
"The Congress president and vice president should apologise to the heroes who killed LeT terrorist Ishrat Jahan and her accomplices," BJP leader Shrikant Sharma said here.
The Ishrat Jahan encounter took place in Gujarat on June 15, 2004, and was led by Deputy Inspector General D.G. Vanzara, who was later jailed in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh encounter case.
"Instead of praising the brave policemen, questions were raised on their sincerity and they were put behind bars by the Congress regime. Now the mask has come off their faces," he added.
Sharma alleged that the Congress had tried to politicise terror in order to defame the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also alleged that it tried to influence the NIA and CBI probes into the encounter case.
