Ishrat Jahan part of terror cell, says indicted IB cop Rajinder Kumar

NEW DELHI: The ex-Intelligence Bureau heavyweight CBI has charged with conspiracy to murder Ishrat Jahan and three others says the “four were terrorists” and dismissed the chargesheet as “not worth the paper it was written on”.

Retired IB special director Rajinder Kumar also told ET, responding to a question on allegations of a ‘fake encounter’, that it is “IB’s job to give intelligence, not decide on action”. “The entire security establishment is backing me,” Kumar said during the course of a detailed interview.

Kumar is the only senior officer in IB’s history to face a murder-related charge. He was charged by CBI last week with the conspiracy to murder Ishrat and three others in a “joint operation” with the Gujarat Police.

He said, “They (the four killed by the police) were in a terror module…everyone was part of a terrorist operation. If one reads the statement of the wife of Javed Sheikh (who was killed) and other witnesses in CBI’s chargesheet, nobody can say there was no terror angle.”

Ishrat’s family has maintained she was a college-goer with no links to terrorists. CBI Director Ranjit Sinha had told ET the chargesheet does not examine the antecedents of the four who were killed, two of whom were Pakistanis.

CBI’s argument has been that the antecedents were immaterial to the crime of killing them in a ‘fake encounter’. Asked to respond to the ‘fake encounter’ charge, Kumar said, “I only give intelligence. Action is solely taken by police and not by IB.”

Kumar took an aggressive stand saying, “there cannot be any evidence as IB’s actions involve no criminality.” He said IB “was going through an agnipariksha and will emerge unscathed from this”. “As far as I am concerned, my actions involve no criminality, I stand by it and I will show this in court,” Kumar told ET.

Kumar, a 1979-batch IPS officer of the Manipur-Tripura cadre, was number three in IB’s hierarchy when he retired as the covert agency’s special director last July. He was posted as the head of the Gujarat unit of IB in 2004 when the Ishrat Jahan encounter took place. CBI, after charging Kumar and three other serving IB officers, has sought the Union home ministry’s sanction to prosecute him in the case.

Asked if he felt that he had been made a scapegoat, Kumar told ET that the entire security establishment is behind him. “The whole security establishment, and not just IB, is behind me. Nobody in the security establishment finds any criminality in my actions and they know that IB discharged its counter-terrorism duties with complete devotion in this matter,” Kumar said.

Asked if this meant the home ministry will deny CBI sanction, Kumar said: “That you will have to ask the home ministry”. Does he feel the chargesheet will be a career blot? “I do not see any blot on my career as I have done nothing wrong,” he said.