Trading cautiously over David Coleman Headley's claim that Ishrat Jahan was an LeT operative, CPI today said his "so-called" statement was "not clear" and insisted the 19-year-old's killing was indeed a "fake encounter".
"Headley's so-called comment is not clear. He was suggested three names and he picked up one of them. Whether she (Ishrat) had connections with terrorist or not...It was not an encounter. Encounter means there is cross-firing.
"She indeed was killed, it was like a cold-blooded murder. If she was a terrorist, she could have been arrested and kept in jail," CPI general secretary S Sudhakar Reddy said.
Reddy, without naming anyone, also stated that "those behind" the killing are behaving as if they are "vindicated" after Headley made the statement.
"Now they (those involved) say that they are vindicated, it is not a false encounter. It is a false encounter because there is no cross-firing in it," he added.
Pakistani-American terrorist Headley today told a special court in Mumbai that young college girl Ishrat, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in 2004 in Gujarat, was an operative of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Headley's deposition led to a political slugfest earlier in the day with BJP demanding that Congress leadership should apologise for "targeting" Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was Chief Minister of Gujarat when the alleged encounter took place, over her killing "at the cost of national security".
Congress sought to dismiss BJP demand for apology insisting the "fundamental question" was whether she and her accomplices were killed in fake encounter.
