Media report on 'tutoring' witness doesn't absolve P Chidambaram of his role: BJP

NEW DELHI: BJP today said the media report about alleged tutoring of a witness on how to answer questions related to missing Ishrat Jahan case files does not absolve former Home Minister P Chidambaram of his "role" in the change of affidavit to dilute the "fact" that she was terrorist.

It also said that the senior MHA official at the centre of the row has also issued a statement rejecting the charge of tutoring and pointed out that it was admitted by former home secretary G K Pillai that some files had gone missing.

"Unfortunately Congress feels that one of the newspapers has given them another springboard to prove that Ishrat Jahan had no LeT link. It does not absolve Chidambaram's role on changing the affidavit and Congress' trade-off between national security and political interest," its national secretary Sidharth Singh told reporters.

Another party secretary Shrikant Sharma also attacked Congress after it accused the government of "fixing" the probe into the missing files.

Noting that there were many "evidence", including reports of IB and the FBI of the US, to prove that she was a terrorist, Sharma said Congress' comments today were part of its efforts to prove that she was not a terrorist.

"Instead of making such claims, Congress should apologise to the country," he said.

He alleged that whether it was Batla House encounter case or the Ishrat case, Congress had expressed sympathies with terrorists as he noted that the party leaders had gone to the houses of those killed in the Batla case to sympathise with their families.