Ishrat Jahan encounter, the ugly face of politics

The death of a college student and the death of democracy. The naked truth of Ishrat Jahan encounter is yet to be unravelled completely, but it is clear that there is a lot beyond what meets the eyes.

Talk about politics getting dirty? The allegation and the evidence behind the alleged kidnapping and encounter of Ishrat proves exactly that. The story is confusing since all you get to hear the words 'BJP', 'Congress' and fake encounter.

The encounter was as if done to set scores. While the BJP kept on harping that the Congress is yet to be punished for its role in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 or the several encounter cases of 'fake encounters' approved by it in the successive years, the Congress too does not leave any stones unturned to remind it of India's holocaust days in the Gujarat riots.

BJP plays victims

Much to the surprise of the onlookers, the mud slinging is rather dramatic in Ishrat Jahan's case. The Congress has been portrayed as the villain and the BJP the innocent victim.

[Read:Ishrat Jahan: Two key documents may have been destroyed ]

In the Ishrat case, the JP pointed that the Congress had staged this to taint the BJP. The conspiracy was hatched by Sonia Gandhi and the then Home Minister P Chidambaram executed this to target the Modi government's coming of power.

The fire is fuelled by politics

The 2004 encounter suddenly hit the headlines again when the Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley said that he had heard about Ishrat Jahan, the 19-year old girl who was gunned down by the Gujarat Police in 2004.

[Read: Missing Ishrat files not traced as May 31 deadline approaches ]

The issue was strategically played upon in the Parliament when the BJP cropped the topic up just before and during the first half of the Budget session. This was used as a tool to blunt the allegations by Congress who said that Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani drove Dalit student Rohith Vemula to suicide.

Details, an eye opener

Nirmala Sitharaman, before the beginning of the budget session claimed that the then home minister P Chidambram had signed the first affidavit that was submitted in a Gujarat court in 2009. The affidavit clearly maintained that Ishrat was a Lashkar operative.

When the court asked for a second affidavit, after realising that the details were dubious, Chidambaram paid more attention and found that there was no evidence against Ishrat Sahan, except for claim made by an unfamiliar Pakistani website. However, the news appeared after the encounter.

Sitharaman further said that the Congress wanted the "political elimination" of BJP.

Whatever be the reason, it was sheer display of political ploy that finished a young story....too short.