Ishrat Jahan Encounter case: CBI chargesheet unlikely to dub Ishrat as LeT terrorist

NEW DELHI: CBI is unlikely to dub Ishrat Jahan as a LeT terrorist in its chargesheet to be filed before a Gujarat court on Wednesday. It will just say that the two alleged Pakistanis killed along with her in a fake encounter were in custody of the Intelligence Bureau for over three weeks.

A senior CBI official told ET that no criminal antecedents of Ishrat had come to light during the probe and the 19-year-old had never travelled abroad to Pakistan or West Asia, which may have suggested that she had any terror links. When asked if CBI would term Ishrat or the three others as terrorists as maintained so far by the Gujarat government, CBI Director Ranjit Sinha told ET: “We are not probing whether the four persons killed were terrorists or not. The mandate to CBI from the high court is to only find out whether the encounter was fake or not.” The home ministry in an affidavit before the Gujarat HC in 2009 said Ishrat was “actively associated with LeT”, before submitting another affidavit saying intelligence inputs about the killed persons did not constitute any conclusive proof.

The CBI chargesheet will say that this was a fake encounter engineered by the Gujarat Police with IB’s help. “The two alleged Pakistanis — Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali — were nabbed by IB nearly three weeks before the fake encounter,” a CBI official said. It is believed that Ishrat Jahan’s associate, Javed Sheikh, helped IB nab alleged Pakistanis as he was working as a source for it but also had links with the two said persons. Javed and Ishrat were subsequently detained by IB, nearly a week before the encounter.