Wednesday 09 Sep, 2009 05:08 PM New Delhi. The BJP proposes to approach the Gujarat High Court to quash or overturn the report of the Metropolitan magistrate of Ahmedabad, who has described the killing of Ishrat Jehan and four others by the Gujarat police on June 15, 2004, as “fake encounter”.

The Gujarat police, led by their encounter specialist IPS officer DG Vanzara, currently in jail facing trial in another fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kasar Bi, had then claimed that Ishrat, Javed Sheikh, alias Parnesh Pillai, and two others were LeT terrorists. They were travelling to Ahmedabad in a car with a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi, when they were accosted by the police and died in an encounter.

But Magisitrate SP Tamang has debunked the entire Gujarat police theory in his 243-page handwritten report saying that Ishrat and her friends were picked up from their homes in Mumbra, Mumbai, on June 12 and forcibly brought to Ahmedabad, killed in cold blood and then a false drama of encounter was concocted and presented to the media by the Ahmedabad police to seek favours and out of turn promotions from the CM.

The BJP is naturally incensed over the report, which provoked Congress spokesman Manish Tiwari to castigate Modi. BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad cited at length an affidavit of the Union Home Ministry submitted before the Gujarat High Court on 6 August, 2009, less than a month ago, reiterating that Ishrat was a terrorist, that the Home Ministry and the IB had sent warning notes mentioning about LeT threats to national and state leaders, including Narendra Modi.

He said four things emerged from this affidavit. One that the Indian intelligence knew of threats to the lives of important leaders both national and those in the states; that LeT had adopted Indian modules to perform this function and that Ishrat and her accomplice Javed Sheikh were part of the conspiracy to eliminate Modi.

Asked if he considered the magisterial report as false and motivated, Prasad said, “I do not want to comment on the contents of the report. I do not feel competent to do so.”

He, however, asked the Congress and the Government of India to explain its affidavit before to the High Court and added, “As far as fight against terrorism is concerned it should be trans-party and should not be looked at in a partisan manner.”

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