Intelligence Bureau’s Rajendra Kumar denies ever meeting Ishrat Jehan

NEW DELHI: Intelligence Bureau Special Director Rajendra Kumar, during his questioning by CBI on Tuesday, is said to have stoutly denied ever meeting Ishrat Jehan and said the word of an accused police officer in the same case, GL Singhal, could not be relied upon.

Singhal, who is suspected by the CBI of actually pulling the trigger on Ishrat and three others in a fake encounter, is the IPS officer who has deposed before a Magistrate last month giving intricate details on how the conspiracy was weaved, a senior CBI official confirmed to ET.

This legally-admissible confession with which Kumar was confronted with is believed to detail the role played by the Gujarat unit of the IB, which was headed then by Kumar, in the alleged interception and abduction of the four alleged terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba before they were handed over to the Gujarat Police and shown killed in an encounter.

Singhal walked out on bail on May 27 after CBI did not file a charge-sheet against him within the stipulated period of 90 days post his arrest. He is subsequently said to have “co-operated” with the CBI and provided a key testimony before court that said Kumar handed over the said terrorists and knew of the entire conspiracy. This enabled CBI to summon Kumar on June 18 as an accused.

Kumar rubbished Singhal’s claims during his questioning by CBI and said his role was limited to generating the terror input and he never met the four said terrorists but CBI is not impressed. “It is basically Singhal’s word against that of Kumar. How is the testimony of an accused being considered so conclusive?,” a senior Intelligence official said.

A CBI official said their chargesheet expected before June 4 would concentrate on “the interception and taking custody of the persons until they lost the lives and the FIR filed of the so-called encounter” and not the intelligence input generated earlier by Kumar.