Media ignites Narendra Modi-Ishrat Jahan controversy again

New Delhi, June 14: Media reports once again ignited the controversy over Narendra Modi and Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. Mentioning about a letter from Intelligence Bureau (IB) to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a media report claimed that Modi was indeed on the hit list of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

India Today claimed that the letter mentioned that the Gujarat Chief Minister along with BJP veteran leader LK Advani were targeted by LeT before the encounter in Gujarat in which Ishrat Jahan and others were killed.

The letter dated Feb 13, 2013 mentions that the terror outfit had instructed its cadres in India to monitor the movements of leaders including Modi, Advani, VHP leader Praveen Togadia and the then Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray.

Ishrat Jahan and others were killed in an encounter on June 15, 2004. According to the media report, IB had alerted Gujarat and other States' Police chiefs about the planning of LeT to carry out attacks.

Rajendra Kumar, the then chief of IB in Gujarat, had personally met then Ahmedabad Police Commissioner KR Kaushik and informed that two LeT militants had plan to carry out terror attacks in the state. The two terrorists reportedly had come from Pakistan's Punjab province.

Here it can be recalled that convicted terrorist David Headley once had implicated Ishrat as LeT terrorist. Headley, during an interaction with the National Investigation Agency (NIA), told that was a suicide bomber of LeT. However, the NIA overruled such statement calling the reports as "baseless".

The CBI has been claiming that Ishrat was not a terrorist and she was killed in a fake encounter case. CBI Director Ranjit Sinha on Friday, June 14 was quoted as saying, "We are proceedings against Kumar on strong evidence in our possession and as per law. We have enough evidence and that is the basis for us to summon him."

OneIndia News