The BJP on Saturday appealed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to “apolitically and objectively” deal with the spat between the Intelligence Bureau and the CBI over the Ishrat Jahan encounter case. The Opposition parties also cautioned the Government against the misuse of these two agencies for the sake of political interests.
Jahan, an alleged leT operative, was killed in an encounter in 2004. The cops involved in the encounter are said to have acted on the basis of an intelligence input from IB.
BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said there are reports of a “trust deficit” between IB and the CBI on the Ishrat case. “This issue has now reached the doorstep of the Prime Minister. We ask him to look at the issue apolitically and objectively so that IB and CBI work in national interest rather than for political mileage,” Sitharaman said.
The main Opposition also alleged that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry appeared to be engaged in controlling and censoring the press on the Ishrat Jahan case. Sitharaman said some reports relating to the encounter were put on the website of leading magazines but these were removed from the site “within no time”.
“Is the Information and Broadcasting Ministry involved in this in somewayIJ Are the media organisations being suppressed by the MinistryIJ If the IB, CBI and now the media are being controlled, then we wonder if we are getting back to the Emergency days,” Sitharaman said.