Ishrat case: Modi may not be named in chargesheet

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, his aide and then state home minister Amit Shah, and Intelligence Bureau’s special director Rajinder Kumar are unlikely to be named in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case chargesheet. HT reports.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, his aide and then state home minister Amit Shah, and Intelligence Bureau’s special director Rajinder Kumar are unlikely to be named in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case charge sheet.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will file its chargesheet in Gujarat high court by Wednesday. It is probing the June 2004 encounter deaths in Ahmedabad of Mumbai college student Ishrat and three other Lashkar-e-Taiba terror suspects accused of plotting to kill Modi.

The agency, which is still gathering evidence on Kumar's alleged role in the conspiracy, is likely to keep probes open and could include his name in its supplementary charge sheet later. Kumar will retire on July 31.

“The encounter was fake. CBI is not concerned whether those killed were terrorists or not. In the first chargesheet, we will only detail the roles of accused police officials who had a direct role in the fake encounter,” said a CBI source on Monday.

"There is a conspiracy to always target Modi to tarnish his image. This is seen in the manner in which this government is working. The Ishrat Jahan encounter took place in 2004. The case was handed over to CBI in 2011. The affidavit, filed when Shivraj Patil was Union Home Minister, and was sought to be changed," BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi told reporters.

BJP questioned how CBI could interrogate Rajendra Kumar, an IB official, in the encounter case.

"IB and RAW are above CBI in hierarchy. So, who is CBI to interrogate an IB official? Security cover is very important part of intelligence agencies," Lekhi said.

The BJP leader maintained the UPA government has been changing its chargesheet in several high-profile cases with passage of time. Central agencies like CBI and NIA are "misused" for filing subsequent chargesheets, Lekhi alleged.

She also maintained that NIA has "no foot soldiers and no wherewithal" to handle terror cases.

With inputs from PTI