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CBI forging ‘facts’ in Ishrat case?

Author: Kartikeya Tanna
Publication: Niticentral.com
Date: June 28, 2013
URL: http://www.niticentral.com/2013/06/28/cbi-forging-facts-in-ishrat-case-96629.html

On Thursday, NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain came up with an ‘exclusive’ report on the Ishrat Jahan encounter case claiming access to evidence with CBI and the draft status report CBI has to submit in the Gujarat High Court next month. This is mostly on the lines of an ‘investigative’ report by Tehelka.

Should CBI uncover IB?

Apart from the war between the IB and CBI on the veracity of the LeT connection of Ishrat Jahan and her accomplices who were killed in an encounter in 2004, the genuineness of which is under probe, both reports hint, rather loudly, at the possibility that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his close aide Amit Shah may have been in the know of the encounter.

Whether or not the encounter is fake, and to what extent IB officer Rajinder Kumar’s intelligence input on the LeT connections is true and genuine, shall be known as the law takes its course. The sheer hurry with which NDTV and Tehelka have “hinted” at Modi and Shah, however, needs to be examined.

Journalistic incompetence or predetermined mind?

Firstly, in the report (at 5:25), he actually says that the High Court has already established the Ishrat encounter as fake. One wonders what is left for the CBI and the courts to do! In fact, only around two weeks ago, when the CBI obsessed over the LeT links of the dead, the High Cpurt told it to focus on whether the encounter was fake. Whether this is pure journalistic incompetence or a predetermined mind, I would let readers decide.

Calls between Vanzara and Modi and Shah

Coming to the ‘finger of suspicion’ pointing at Modi and Shah, the reports allege that one of the IPS officers accused in the case, DG Vanzara has claimed to have overheard another accused saying he got the go-ahead from ‘white beard’ and ‘black beard’. To assume that, in this context, these code words refer to Modi and Shah respectively isn’t entirely off the mark.

But let us examine how the CBI is claiming this ‘fact’. The CBI has got to know of Vanzara’s claim from a testimony by an officer. There is an immediate problem with this. X is testifying before the CBI that he heard Y telling Z that A and B had given the green signal. This isn’t just hearsay which any court would deal with abundant caution, it is double hearsay!

One is instantly reminded of Justice Suresh Hosbet’s callous interview to NDTV last year where he said that Haren Pandya had told him that an IPS officer who attended the meeting at Modi’s residence on February 27, 2002, told Pandya that Modi had instructed officers to go soft on Hindus.

And, to corroborate Vanzara’s claims, the reports point out calls between Vanzara and Modi’s residence and Shah several times on the date of the encounter and prior thereto. Does that reveal something sensational per se?

Not quite. It is important to remember that Modi, apart from being the Chief Minister, was also the Home Minister. Amit Shah was Minister of State (Home). If Ishrat and her accomplices were LeT modules on a mission to kill Modi, among others, the two Home Ministers would obviously be in the know of surveillance and a likely chase.

NDTV and Tehelka (and, perhaps, the CBI) would do better by distinguishing between a Home Minister and MoS (Home) being aware of surveillance and chase and actually approving a cold-blooded murder without any risk of imminent danger. If a Home Minister were to be suspected every time call records showed calls between the police officers in an encounter and the Minister, many Home Ministers would be in trouble.

Unless there is incontrovertible evidence of what conversation actually took place, to point the finger at Modi and Shah, just because an officer kept the two Home Ministers informed on a serious matter is irresponsible.
 
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