Even as a magisterial inquiry said that the June 2004 killing of Ishrat Jehan and three others was also a case of “fake encounter,” the Home Ministry on Tuesday sought to distance the Centre from the controversy. It said that while it had provided intelligence inputs to the Gujarat government about the suspicious movements of some Lashkar operatives in the State, the shootout that followed was entirely the “doing of the State police.”
Senior officials were responding to queries about the discrepancy between the Home Ministry’s assessment of Ishrat Jehan and the others as “LeT terrorists” and the judicial inquiry finding they were innocent.
