Explosive Revelations
- Former Home Secretary GK Pillai’s TV interview has created an uproar.
- Ishrat Jahan and three others were shot dead in an encounter on 15 June 2004.
- Pillai says UPA government deleted LeT references from Ishrat Jahan affidavit.
Former home secretary GK Pillai’s interview with Times Now aired on Thursday has created an uproar in Parliament.
Pillai said that the decision to omit 19-year-old Mumbai resident Ishrat Jahan’s possible links with terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in a home ministry affidavit was taken at the political level.
I don’t think the affidavits were contradictory to each other. What really happened was that in one affidavit there was a mention of the fact that these people were LeT operatives etc. And in the other one, that aspect was deleted. I really wouldn’t know why it was deleted because that wasn’t done at my level. It was done at a political level.GK Pillai, Former Home Secretary
‘The logic behind that is something you will have to ask at the political level”, the former Home Secretary added.
Pillai was (in 2009) serving under then home minister P Chidambaram when the government filed two affidavits in as many months in the controversial Ishrat Jahan encounter case.
- The first affidavit was filed in the Gujarat High Court on August 6, 2009.
- In that affidavit, the home ministry stated Jahan and Javed Ghulam Sheikh were LeT members.
- Ishrat was travelling with Javed Ghulam Sheikh at the time of the June 2004 encounter.
- But in September, the ministry made a U-turn.
It said the central government was not concerned with the merits of the action taken by the Gujarat police and anything stated in the (first) affidavit was not intended to support or justify the action of the state police.
There are two different aspects to the case. Whether or not they were LeT operatives and if it was or not a case of fake encounter. I have no doubt that this Intelligence operation involved the LeT. This Intelligence part should be separated from this issue of fake encounter. These two need to be separated, otherwise you are mixing up the two and making allegations.GK Pillai, Former Home Secretary
RK Singh, former Home Secy has backed Pillai’s claims that Ishrat Jahan came to Gujarat to kill leaders, by saying, “He is right, Headley said the same thing:”
Pillai himself refrained from casting any aspersions over the alleged fake encounter by saying there are two different aspects to the case that everyone must understand.
In an already politically volatile scenario, the latest revelations have given fodder for a pitched NDA versus UPA battle in Parliament. Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu was quick to demand an answer from the Congress party.
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