|
The Bharatiya Janata Party yesterday said the government should disclose the terror links of Ishrat Jahan who was killed in a shootout with police. |
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday filed a charge-sheet in which it claimed that Jahan had no terrorist links. Seven police officers were charge-sheeted for the staged shootout in 2004.
BJP president Rajnath Singh claimed the case was being hyped for political purposes.
Talking to reporters here, Singh said the government should disclose which terrorist outfit Jahan was associated with. “What was her track record?”
Singh said over 3,000 staged shootouts had taken place before 2002, but the hype was being created only around the Jahan case. “Hype is being created on the issue for political purposes,” he said.
The CBI charge-sheet in the Jahan encounter case said that she and other three persons were killed in cold blood, in an operation jointly conducted by the Gujarat police and the Intelligence Bureau.
While indicating that Jahan, 19, who lived in Thane, was not a terrorist as alleged, the charge-sheet named policemen P P Pande, A Choudhary, D G Vanzare, Tarun Barot, J R Parmar, Bharat Patel and N K Amin among the accused.
They were charged with murder, abduction, conspiracy and destruction of evidence.
The CBI said the encounter was ‘fake’.
The agency however said three others killed in the same gun battle on June 15, 2004 allegedly harboured terror links.
Welcoming the charge-sheet, Jahan’s family said in Mumbai they had been “vindicated” after struggling for justice for nine years.
“We have got justice after so many years. All allegations against Ishrat have been proved false. We are happy that the CBI states she was not a terrorist. Now we demand the severest punishment to all the accused, this is our appeal. We have suffered a lot all these years,” said her sister Musharat.
Jahan’s mother Shamima Kauser said in an emotional voice that she had been insisting for the past nine years that her daughter was innocent and killed in cold blood.
Extending sympathy to the family was Nationalist Congress Party state working president Jitendra Awhad, who hails from Thane.
Ahwad said: “People don’t know how the family was destroyed in the wake of the allegations against Ishrat.
“Her sister could not complete her education, her brother could not get a job anywhere, the family was ostracised and had to make monumental efforts just to survive,” he said.
The CBI charge-sheet added that Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were allegedly planning terror attacks in Ahmedabad.
The CBI said Pillai was allegedly using Jahan, a college student in Mumbai, as a shield for his activities.
Jahan belonged to a middle-class Muslim-dominated Mumbra town of Thane, barely 30km north of Mumbai.