Putting the Congress party in a fix, former UPA functionary wore the coat of a whistleblower by divulging details on the party’s interventions in the famed Ishrat Jahan case.
Former union home secretary G K Pillai, in an interview to Times Now on Thursday, said the contradictory affidavits in the case was filed in Gujarat High Court with the knowledge of the Congress-led UPA government.
According to him, the decision to remove the term ‘LeT’ from one of the affidavits was taken by a top level team.
“What really happened was, in one of the affidavits there was a mention of LeT operatives, but in the other, that aspect was deleted.”
When asked why it was erased, he clarified: “I would not know because it was not done at my level. I would say it was done at the political level,” he said.
Going by the revelations of Pillai, the Congress had put in efforts to make it look like a ‘fake encounter’ so as to target the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
While one of the affidavits stated Ishrat and gang were killed in a ‘fake encounter’, the other clarified that there was no ‘conclusive evidence’, each within a time gap of just two months.
He added that the deceased were LeT operatives. However, he held that Ishrat may not have been aware of the backstage operations.
When asked if it was a ‘fake encounter’ indeed, he said the CBI had investigated the accusations had filed a chargesheet. “The real issue is whether it was a real encounter or fake. The CBI had investigated that,” he said.
He added to Times Now that it was the Intelligence Bureau (IB) which trapped the LeT operatives by enticing them to take up an operation in Gujarat. As IB saw them coming, it trapped them. “We used a source who they (LeT operatives) thought was their source,” he said.
When asked if Ishrat was a terrorist, he said it cannot be asserted upon. “I would say that she knew that something was wrong. Otherwise an unmarried Muslim girl would not go with another married person to different places, spend nights out and so on and so forth, which is not the normal pattern at all… Perhaps she knew something was wrong. She could have been a cover. In fact, it was one of the claims she was consistently stating as a spinster was more likely to be suspicious but if somebody travels as husband and wife, then people don’t look upon them with suspicion,” he said
He pointed out that the LeT had put her name on the website as a martyr, but it was later withdrawn.
“There was no direct evidence, except that LeT put her name on the website. So, I would say may be she was an unwitting player,” he said.
