Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Brinda Karat on Wednesday lashed out at the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat Government after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in its chargesheet said that the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter was fake.
"One thing is absolutely clear that the campaign based on blatant untruth that it was the police that had been fired upon by Ishrat Jahan and the three people she was with has been proved to be an utter lie and to that extent I think the aspect of Modi governance, which includes fake encounter killings, has also been exposed before this country," said Brinda Karat.
"This is basically what Modi governance is all about, fake encounters and then nine-year defence of the fake encounters. And I think that wheel has very much been shredded by the CBI chargesheet," she added.
The CBI in its chargesheet in the Ishrat Jahan case filed in the Gujarat high Court earlier in the day alleged that cops at the Ahmedabad crime branch had written the FIR even before the 'fake encounter' took place. It has charged seven policemen - including DG Vanzara who is in jail and then crime branch chief PP Pande, who is absconding - with murder, conspiracy and destruction of evidence, abduction and under sections of the Arms Act.
The chargesheet says the CBI suspects the involvement of senior intelligence officer Rajendra Kumar and his role and that of others in the IB needs to be investigated further.
The chargesheet rebuts the Gujarat Police claim that Ishrat, a Mumbai college student, and the three men shot dead along with her, were driving towards Ahmedabad when they were intercepted and killed in an exchange of fire on June 15, 2004. The chargesheet says they were abducted and that a cop drove a car with three of them to the encounter site.
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It alleges that one of the men killed in the encounter, Zeeshan Ali, was abducted by the police in April that year, another, Amjad Ali, in May and that Ishrat and a third man Javed were abducted in June. The CBI chargesheet says they were held at different farmhouses.
The agency has alleged that the weapons found with Ishrat and the others at the encounter site were supplied by the state Intelligence Bureau.
Rajendra Kumar was the Gujarat station chief of the Intelligence Bureau or IB when Ishrat and the others were shot dead; the policemen involved said they had received alerts from the IB that the group planned to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Kumar's interrogation by the CBI has created a sharp divide between his agency and the CBI, which is expected to name him as an accused in its next chargesheet, to be filed most likely after he retires at the end of July.
Nineteen-year-old Ishrat was killed along with three others on June 15, 2004 allegedly by a team of Crime Branch officials on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.
The Crime Branch had then claimed that the four were LeT members and were on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.