Ishrat Jahan case: Inquiry report submitted; papers missing

NEW DELHI: The inquiry panel headed by additional secretary BK Prasad has failed to trace the missing Ishrat Jahan documents and concluded that the papers were “removed knowingly or unknowingly or misplaced” in September 2009 when Congress leader P Chidambaram was the Union home minister. The 52-page report, submitted before Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi on Wednesday, stated the documents went missing in 2009.

It didn’t make any direct reference to Chidambaram and remained inconclusive on fixing the responsibility. The one-man panel examined 12 serving and retired officials who dealt with the files from 2009 to 2016.

Then joint secretary D Diptivilasa, in-charge of internal security division, told the panel that the documents were missing since 2009 when they came to him from the home minister’s office, the report stated. He, however, failed to explain why he did not report the matter then. The panel also recorded the statements of then director PK Mishra and then undersecretary RVS Mani.

The report also noted that no one raised any suspicion on the missing documents till 2013 when one of the officers red-flagged it internally, but did not initiate any action as the main documents, including the first and second affidavit filed by the home ministry before the Gujarat high court, were there in the files.

The papers that went missing included the copy of an affidavit vetted by the AG and submitted in the Gujarat high court in 2009, the draft of the second affidavit on which changes were made, two letters written by then home secretary GK Pillai to then AG late GE Vahanvati and the copy of the draft affidavit.