#dnaEdit: Keep politics out

The Ishrat Jahan case turns problematic after the statements made by former home secretary GK Pillai and former under-secretary RS Mani in the same ministry that the Congress-led UPA government had altered in its second affidavit in the Gujarat High Court in 2009, where it dropped reference to Ishrat Jahan’s link to the Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (LeT). Congress leader P Chidambaram, who was the home minister then, admits the change was made. Pillai says that this change was done at the political level, by which he means that it was not Chidambaram alone who was responsible for it. Perhaps, he implies the Congress leadership, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, were involved in the decision to alter the wording of the affidavit. Of course, many critics would contend that the Congress leadership did not include Singh and that it referred primarily to party president Sonia Gandhi.

The question that arises is as to why Gandhi and Chidambaram were so intent on dropping the reference to Ishrat’s LeT connection. The BJP argues that it was an attempt to frame then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and then Gujarat home minister Amit Shah. It can be argued, and plausibly too, that the Congress was looking for ways to tarnish the image of Modi, and this was seen in the numerous cases relating to the 2002 post-Godhra anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. The Ishrat Jahan case just came in handy. It was a plain dirty trick that politicians all over the world use without compunction. But no politician can be unmade on the basis of mere calumny, and this has turned out to be true in the case of Modi.

It is now quite apparent that whatever may have been her compulsions — economic or otherwise — Ishrat was indeed hobnobbing with suspected terrorists. It does not however justify that the Gujarat police were right in shooting her down along with two of her companions. The charge against the state police has been that it was a fake encounter, and that the police did not kill the alleged terrorists in self-defence. The intelligence input that the terrorists were part of the plan to assassinate Modi was definitely crucial but it could have been established better if Ishrat and her companions were captured instead of being gunned down.

The case becomes politically murky because of the latest statements of Pillai and Mani. The Congress is certainly on the back foot and the BJP on the offensive. But the political spat has no bearing on the case as such, and it does not alter the legal issues involved in it. Many of the parties that have ruled in the states, and those who have held power at the Centre, and this includes both the Congress and the BJP, have been guilty of extra-judicial killings of insurgents, who include Maoists, separatists in the North-east and in Jammu and Kashmir and now the different jihadi groups with their handlers based in Pakistan. Security forces consider it a necessity, however questionable and controversial it may be.

Whatever may the charges and counter-charges that the leaders of Congress and BJP hurl at each other, it has no bearing on the legal aspects of the Ishrat Jahan case. The question to be determined in this case is this: Was she killed gratuitously because she was in the company of the suspected terrorists? Was she a member of the LeT? The answers cannot be found in the deposition of David Coleman Headley. The BJP seems to have realised it, though initially it felt that Headley’s evidence vindicated the killing of the young woman. Secondly, was there sufficient provocation for the police to have gunned her down?