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Centre to seek legal opinion on Ishrat affidavit
Legal experts will examine the affidavit that has landed the Centre in the dock in the killing of a Mumbai college girl and her three accomplices by the Gujarat police.
Legal experts will examine the affidavit that has landed the Centre in the dock in the killing of a Mumbai college girl and her three accomplices by the Gujarat police.
“We have been directed to scrutinise the affidavit to ascertain whether it supports the encounter claims of the Gujarat government in any manner,” said a senior law ministry official who didn’t wish to be identified as he not authorised to speak to the media.
The views of legal experts will decide if the Centre will file a clarificatory affidavit or a new one in the killings of Ishrat Jahan and three others.
Jahan and her three accomplices gunned down by police in June 2004 were Lashkar-e-Tayyeba operatives, the affidavit, filed on August 6 on behalf of the home ministry in the Gujarat High Court, said.
Rattled by the document, considered damaging for the UPA government’s political agenda, the law ministry is considering a probe on how such an affidavit was filed. The ministry is responsible for clearing court documents filed on behalf of the Centre.
The Gujarat government had cited the affidavit in its defence a day after Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate S.P. Tamang declared the encounter as “fake” on September 7.
“No proposal for the CBI investigation into the case is under the Central government’s consideration nor does it consider the present case fit for CBI investigation,” the affidavit said. This in particular has the ministry upset.
