Even as a Congress-BJP political slugfest over the "fake encounter" unfolds with Congress leader Digvijaya Singh asking the home ministry to clarify if Headley — who surveyed 26/11 targets for Lashkar-e-Taiba — had indeed flagged Ishrat's LeT links, the NIA extract fanned the controversy further. According to excerpts from Headley's "unabridged" statement to the NIA, shared with TOI, the American LeT operative, on being asked about Ishrat, said LeT commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi had told him in 2005 that she was part of Muzammil's "botched up" operations.
Lakhvi is currently under arrest in Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks.
"I state that in late 2005, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi introduced Muzammil to me. Having introduced Muzammil, Zaki talked about the accomplishments of Muzammil as a Lashkar commander. Zaki also sarcastically mentioned that Muzammil was a top commander whose every big 'project' had ended in a failure.
"Zaki added that Ishrat Jahan module was also one of Muzammil's 'botched up' operations," says Para 168 of the NIA report shared with the IB. It adds, in Para 169, that Headley stated that "apart from this, he had no other information/knowledge about Ishrat Jahan".
With the CBI naming senior IB official Rajinder Kumar as complicit in the fake encounter of Ishrat and three others, the disclosure of Headley's statement to NIA appeared to be retaliation by his colleagues who are upset about Kumar being allegedly a "collateral victim" of the Congress-BJP fight.
Interestingly, the NIA did not place this part of Headley's interrogation in the public domain, apparently on the ground that it amounted to hearsay. Intelligence sources, however, wonder how the rest of Headley's revelations were investigated and scrutinized while the Ishrat bit was discounted.
With BJP harping on the Headley evidence, Digvijay Singh, who met home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Friday, complained about NIA, IB and CBI speaking in different voices. He sought to know if Headley had indeed told NIA that Ishrat was part of an LeT module. The BJP too joined in, asking the government to come clean on the Mumbra teen's alleged terror background.
The disclosure of Headley's statement came even as Shinde said that he would make inquiries from the NIA, and suggested that the IB-CBI feud may be spinning out of government's control.
NIA, for its part, maintains Headley's disclosures have no evidentiary value and are based on "hearsay". It has been suggested that the agency took this position on being nudged by the political authority. It is believed that Headley consented to being interviewed by NIA on the condition that nothing he says would be used for purposes other than aiding further investigation.
The statement made by Headley to FBI is learnt to be even more damning. The FBI statement, as quoted by IB, refers to Headley's revelation that Muzammil, with the help of Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, had recruited Ishrat as a potential bomber. The LeT module, he is reported to have said, was planning attacks on temples in India.
Interestingly, MHA's own affidavit filed in the Gujarat High Court in 2007 cites Ishrat's links with LeT. It states Javed was in touch with the Lashkar cadres who were planning a major operation in Gujarat. It said Javed, who converted to Islam but secured a passport in his original Hindu name, Pranesh Pillai, had travelled to Dubai, where he worked for Lashkar. Later, he met Ishrat in Mumbai and convinced her to join him.
Though the MHA revised the affidavit in 2009, it only delinked itself from the follow-up action on the IB inputs, but stopped short of disowning the inputs on terror links of the slain module.
The MHA affidavit had pointed out how Ishrat was hailed as a martyr on the LeT website and in its publication Ghazva Times soon after the encounter.
The postings had taken umbrage to her veil being removed. Interestingly, the post on the said website was pulled off in 2007, and an apology tendered for her being labeled an LeT cadre. This came just before Gopinath Pillai, father of Javed Sheikh, filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding a CBI probe into the encounter.
MHA's 2009 affidavit said the apology was only a "tactical ploy" of LeT to disown her.
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