With David Headley deposing that Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in an encounter in Gujarat in 2004, was an operative of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the BJP demanded an “apology” from the Congress for “targeting Narendra Modi over her killing at the cost of national security.”
However, the Congress insisted that what mattered in the case was whether Ishrat and her accomplices were killed in a “fake encounter.”
“Headley’s deposition that she was the LeT’s suicide bomber has unmasked those who do politics over terrorism. We do not expect any morality from the Congress,” BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.
“But if Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, who is a champion in the politics of conspiracy, have any shame left, they must apologise to the nation,” Mr. Sharma added.
Demanding an apology from the Congress over the Ishrat Jahan encounter case in light of David Headley’s deposition, BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma cited the comments of Congress leaders questioning the Batla House encounter and their allusion to the hand of the RSS in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. “It has become clear that the Congress played with national security,” he said.
Law does not allow fake encounter: Congress
“If the BJP wants to stand with those who have been accused by the CBI in a Gujarat High Court-monitored process that they were complicit in the fake encounter, they can go and stand with them in a court of law,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said. “There is nothing which stops the BJP from doing that”.
He said the metropolitan court in Ahmedabad first concluded that this was a “staged encounter, in other words, a fake encounter.” The Gujarat High Court monitored the CBI probe, and the agency concluded that the encounter was fake. It filed charge sheets against the accused in a court, he said. “So, therefore, if the government or the BJP wants to use David Coleman Headley’s testimony to justify an encounter which a court-monitored probe has found to be fake, then neither the law and nor jurisprudence allows it,” Mr. Tewari said.
