Senior Congress leader and former Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Tuesday demanded to know as to which part of the second affidavit, filed in the Ishrat Jehan encounter case, was wrong legally, morally or politically. Talking to media persons after filing the nomination for Rajya Sabha polls from Maharashtra, Chidambaram justified the second affidavit.
While fielding a question on the missing documents in the Ishrat Jehan case, Chidambaram stumped the journalists present at the news conference by demanding to know as to how many of them had actually read the second affidavit.
With no response forthcoming from media persons, Chidambaram said: "This is the problem. The further affidavit has only five or six paragraphs. It does not withdraw the first affidavit. In paragraph two, it says why the further affidavit is being filed. The further affidavit was filed after Judge Tamang’s report.... Judge Tamang’s report indicted the police and said it was a fake encounter. The persons killed were in the custody for more than three days”.
“They ( the persons including Ishrat Jehan) were killed at midnight. They were sitting in a car when they were
killed. Rs 2.05 lakh was planted on their bodies. All these findings of a judge in the Maharashtra judiciary,” the former Union Home Minister said.
In response to reports that suggested that the Government of India had not traced the missing documents in the Ishrat Jehan case, Chidambaram said: “I have no answers as the matter is under investigation”
“The further affidavit therefore said in paragraph two as to why it was being filed. In paragraph five, it said that the Government of India shares intelligence inputs regularly with the state governments. Accordingly, we share the intelligence inputs with the state government. The first affidavit disclosed what the intelligence inputs were. But, we wish to clarify: intelligence inputs are only intelligence inputs. That is not conclusive evidence and once cannot come to any conclusion based on intelligence inputs. They must be investigated and prosecuted in the court of law,” he/said.
The senior Congress leader said that it was incomprehensible for him as to why some files were missing. “These missing papers completely vindicate as to what I have been saying. If these papers are missing, then who gains out of it.. That needs to be understood,” Chidambaram added.
Earlier in the day, Chidambaram and Maharashtra’s former chief minister Narayan Rane filed nominations for the forthcoming Rajya Sabha and Maharashtra Council polls at the Vidhan Bhavan here. They were accompanied by leader of the Opposition former chief minister Ashok Chavan, leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, former Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan.