Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Kumar Verma has transferred the Ishrat Jahan encounter missing documents case to the Southern Range of the Crime Branch. An FIR in this regard was registered at Parliament Street police station under Section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) on Thursday last on the complaint of VK Upadhyaya, the Under Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
A senior Crime Branch official confirmed the development and said the relevant documents of the case along with the MHA’s internal inquiry report by the then Additional Secretary (Foreigners), BK Prasad, has been handed over for further investigation.
“Since the matter is sensitive and needs thorough investigation, it was deemed fit to hand over the probe to Crime Branch,” said a senior police official on Wednesday.
The Investigating Officer (IO) is preparing the list of MHA officers who will be summoned for questioning to determine the movement of files pertaining to Ishrat Jahan encounter case. “We need to find out the sequence such as who was in possession of the files in the beginning and to whom it was transferred later. How and under what circumstances, five documents related to the case went missing from the North Block,” said the police official.
When asked about the probability in the event of nobody being arrested in the case, the police official said an untraced report would be submitted by them, thereby meaning that the case would close as it is.
“The complaint from Home Ministry was filed on August 26 and a police case has been registered under ‘stealing’ category earlier this month on September 22,” police said.
An official panel was appointed by the Government to probe the “missing documents” after former Home Secretary GK Pillai sparked a row by claiming that some papers related to an affidavit in the case were changed by then Home Minister P Chidambaram.
The Congress and Chidambaram had denied the charge and instead charged the Modi Government with “politicising” the issue.
The Home Ministry had ordered the probe by senior IAS officer BK Prasad on March 14. He was also given extension in July amid complaints that he had tried to “tutor” some of the witnesses, including retired officials.
The Ministry had maintained that since this is “highly sensitive enquiry” wherein allegations have come in that efforts were made to conceal the terror link of Ishrat, the Government desired that the panel submit a “detailed and final report”.
The NDA Government has maintained that “the second affidavit”, which was different from the original, had said there was no evidence to link Ishrat to the terror group.
The missing documents were the two letters written by then Home Secretary GK Pillai to then Attorney General (AG) on September 18 and 23, 2009, the draft affidavit further amended by the then Home Minister on September 24, 2009, the law officer’s comments and the final corrections to the affidavit made by Chidambaram and office copy of the further affidavit filed with the Gujarat High Court on September 29, 2009.
Ishrat and three others were killed in an alleged shootout in Gujarat in 2004. Police had claimed that they were lashkar-e-Tayyeba (leT) militants on a mission to kill then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The controversy over the case flared up after David Headley, a lashkar operative involved in the 26/11 Mumbai attack, also made some observations on February 11 this year about the case that Ishrat was a lashkar terrorist.