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The BJP on Friday raised the pitch on the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter, once again demanding an apology from Congress President Sonia Gandhi for creating an “artificial debate” around the matter to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was Guajarat Chief Minister.
The ruling party has seized on the revelations of 26/11 terror-accused David Headley about Ishrat Jahan being a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist and maintained that the Congress used her death in the Gujarat encounter to politically malign Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. Headley’s testimony on Thursday was followed by the BJP National Secretary Shrikant Sharma attacking the Gandhis and describing the policemen being prosecuted for the encounter as “ jaanbaz sipahi (brave soldiers)”.
On Friday, the BJP fielded Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to assert that the encounter was a massive “cover-up” by the UPA Government in which facts were twisted to create a false narrative around Gujarat police and the political establishment. She said the aim was to malign Modi, for whom the Congress has had a congenital dislike”.
“We demand that everybody, including the UPA Chairperson, who contributed to this artificial debate, apologise to the people of India,” Sitharaman said. “The whole narrative was woven in a certain way because the Congress has a congenital dislike for a political opponent who happened to be the Chief Minister of Gujarat.”
The Minister said the police officers acted “according to their mandate” after intelligence agencies passed on information about terror modules in the State. The Minister referred to an affidavit filed by the Union Home Ministry when Shivraj Patil was Minister.
In the affidavit, the Home Ministry had told the court about an LeT module in Gujarat in relation to Ishrat’s killing. But Sitharaman said the official position was reversed and the Centre was involved in a “cover up” when a change of guard took place in the Home Ministry.
“Can you (Congress) deny that intelligence agencies shared information about terror modules and it was covered up because of vote bank politics?” Sitharaman asked.
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