Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley on Thursday told a special court here that college girl Ishrat Jahan – who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in 2004 in Gujarat – was an operative of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Testifying via video-link from the US, Headley picked up the name of the 19-year-old Mumbra girl when quizzed about a “botched operation” that LeT commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi had mentioned to him.
The operation, Headley quoted Lakhvi, was conducted in India by another LeT operative Muzammil Butt in which a female member of the terror outfit was killed.
Prodded for details about the operation, Headley said, “There was a female wing in LeT which was headed by one Abu Aiman’s mother. Zaki sahib (Zaki-ur-Rehman) told me about Butt’s botched operation in India. It was some shootout with the police. I don’t know which part in India. But there was one female who was killed in the shootout. I think she was an Indian national and not a Pakistani but was an LeT operative,” he said.
The prosecutor then put forward three names, of which Headley picked up Ishrat Jahan.
Four persons – Ishrat Jahan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Joha – were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The Ahmedabad City Crime Branch had then claimed that those killed in the encounter were LeT terrorists and had landed in Gujarat to kill then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The CBI, which took over probe from the Gujarat High Court appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), had filed a charge sheet in August 2013 saying the encounter was fake.
In further disclosures, 55-year-old Headley, who recently turned approver in the 26/11 case, said LeT had planned attacks on the famous Akshardham temple in Ahmedabad to avenge the Babri Masjid demolition and that terror handler Abu Kahfa was in continuous touch with the 10 terrorists sent to Mumbai to launch the 26/11 attack, from a control room in Karachi.
Headley also told the court how ISI and LeT funded terror operations in India and financed him from time to time. He revealed that Pakistan native Tahawwur Rana visited Mumbai before the terror strikes in November 2008, which left 166 people dead and 309 injured.
He tells Mumbai court of botched operation in which female suicide bomber was killed