The former Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), D.G. Vanzara, said on Thursday that the revelations by David Headley about Ishrat Jahan confirmed what the Gujarat police had been saying since 2004.
He, however, chose to evade questions on the encounter, saying the matter was sub judice and that it was for courts to decide whether the encounter was staged.
Mr. Vanzara was among the several Gujarat police officers arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with a spate of alleged fake encounters, including those in which Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Ishrat Jahan were killed.
After spending six years in jail, he resigned in 2013, and in 2015, he was released on bail, after which he came to Mumbai as his bail conditions forbid him from entering Gujarat.
“What Headley said today is not really new. It is something that we had said back in 2004 and what has been our stand since then.”
‘Even mouthpiece of Lashkar called her a member’
The former Gujarat police officer, D.G. Vanzara, said on Thursday that Ghazwa Times, a Lashkar-e-Taiba mouthpiece published from Lahore, had said Ishrat Jahan was a member of the terror outfit. “But the matter was politicised and taken in a different direction as part of a political conspiracy. Today, the lid has been blown off and we have been vindicated,” he said.
“There was a time when the United States would not grant a visa to certain leaders of our country. Today, a citizen of the same country has turned approver for us and said for the world to hear what we have always maintained,” he said.
He reiterated that the encounters carried out by the Gujarat Police were genuine, and the charges levelled against the police were false. “There was a sustained political conspiracy in which Ishrat was depicted as an innocent college student who was gunned down by us. I ask you if she was innocent, what she was doing with two men who were confirmed to be Pakistani nationals,” he asked.
Asked how Ishrat being a LeT member justified a staged encounter, Mr. Vanzara said the authenticity of the encounter was for courts to decide. “I will not talk about the details of the encounter as the matter is sub-judice. However, a charge sheet is not the final word in a case. The courts will decide whether or not the encounters were fake,” he said.
Reacting to a statement by Ishrat Jahan’s mother Shamima Kauser, raising doubts about Headley’s statement, Mr Vanzara said: “It is her right to raise doubts. But whatever Headley has said has been said in a court in accordance with the law.”
