Come clean on Ishrat, says BJP to central government

The BJP today asked the Centre to confirm or deny reports that jailed US Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley during his interrogation with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently had admitted that Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in an encounter in 2004, was an LeT activist.

The media was agog with reports to this effect for the last 48 hours and the conduct of the Union Government regarding the encounter was ”scandalous” and it was time to make facts clearer to the country, BJP spokesman Ravishankar Prasad told newspersons in New Delhi.

He said firstly the Central Intelligence agencies tipped off Ishrat’s links with LeT and even admitted her links before the Gujarat High Court but when the issue came up before the Supreme Court on a Special Leave Petition (SLP) arising out of the order of the Metropolitan Magistrate, the Government ran down its own agency’s report by filing an affidavit that the intelligence information did not constitute a proof or evidence and the case should be handed over to the CBI for probe.

The LeT website had owned up Ishrat and acknowledged the martyrdom of its activist. Now Headley, who is under US custody, is said to have admitted Ishrat was a fidayeen activist before the NIA during the interrogation. If such is the case, the Government of India should either confirm or deny the facts that have appeared in the media, he demanded.