Team set up to find missing papers of Ishrat Jahan case

New Delhi: Centre on Monday set up a high-level committee to look into the issue of missing files of Ishrat Jahan encounter case. Additional Home Secretary BK Prasad will be heading the one-man inquiry committee set up by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The panel will find out the person responsible for keeping the files and relevant issues, a Home Ministry official said.

The papers which went missing from the Home Ministry include the copy of an affidavit vetted by the Attorney General and submitted in the Gujarat High Court in 2009 and the draft of the second affidavit vetted by the AG on which changes were made.

A few key documents including two letters written by the then Home Secretary, G K Pillai, to then Attorney General, late G E Vahanvati and the copy of the draft affidavit have been untraceable so far.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh had disclosed in Parliament on March 10 that the files were missing.

Read: Chidambaram changed Ishrat affidavit due to 'undue pressure’: BJP

The first affidavit was filed on the basis of inputs from the Maharashtra and Gujarat police, besides the Intelligence Bureau, where it was said that the 19-year-old girl from the outskirts of Mumbai was an LeT activist, but this was ignored in the second affidavit, home ministry officials said.

The second affidavit, said to have been drafted by then home minister P. Chidambaram, said there was no conclusive evidence to prove that Ishrat was a terrorist, officials said.

Former home secretary G.K. Pillai had claimed that as home minister, Chidambaram had recalled the file a month after the original affidavit, which described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives, was filed in the court.

“Only after the affidavit was revised, as directed by the minister, did the file come to me,” Pillai had said.

Read: Ishrat Jahan case: Don’t politicise terror, Rajnath Singh tells Opposition

Chidambaram had said the second affidavit in the case was “absolutely correct”.

He had also maintained that intelligence agencies can only get inputs, they could not certify. The state police, which was to file the chargesheet, has to investigate and get evidence before filing it, he had said.

Chidambaram has also expressed disappointment over Mr Pillai distancing himself from the affidavit issue, despite being “equally responsible”.

Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with the Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The city crime branch had then said those killed in the encounters were LeT terrorists and had landed in Gujarat to kill then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Last week, Rajnath Singh had accused the erstwhile UPA government of hatching a "deep conspiracy" to frame Modi when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister in the Ishrat Jahan case. Singh had claimed that the previous regime had done a 'flip-flop' on the links of Ishrat Jahan with terror outfit LeT.