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Following the revelation of "torture" of a bureaucrat to coerce him into naming the intelligence officers in Ishrat Jehan encounter case, the BJP today charged former Home Minister P Chidambaram with tampering of evidence and distorting affidavit before the court with sole objective of framing Prime Minister Narendra Modi(the then Gujarat CM) and BJP president Amit Shah ahead of elections.Addressing mediapersons here, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said despite clinching evidence such as terror outfit LeT calling Ishrat as its operative, naming her as martyr in LeT mouthpiece Ghazwa Times, and confession of 26/11 mastermind David Coleman Headley before NIA that Ishrat was LeT operative, the UPA government sought to fabricate case against "able intelligence officers" because of its sole obsession to nail Mr Modi.At least two UPA time bureaucrats in recent days have dissented and accused the Chidambaram-led Home ministry for fudging evidence and affidavits to turn Ishrat encounter case against Modi government in Gujarat.Former Home Secretary G K Pillai has said the Home Minister bypassed him while submitting second affidavit before court in which Ishrat was dropped as terror operator.Today, another bureaucrat, the then Under Secretary MVS Mani, made a galling allegation that he was tortured with smouldering cigarette butts by Special Investigation Team chief to coerce into filing the second affidavit.During the UPA government rule, when the Gujarat High Court was hearing the case of alleged fake encounter in which Ishrat was killed, the Home Ministry filed an affidavit on August 6, 2009 saying that Ishrat and three others killed were terrorists. Then another affidavit was filed on September 30, 2009, claiming that there was no conclusive evidence to suggest she was a terrorist.In the second affidavit, the then Intelligence Bureau Special Director Rajinder Kumar was named as an accused by CBI of murder in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case. Mr Kumar was said to be officer who had zeroed in on the terrorist module which Ishrat was part of. This had effective exposed the intelligence officer on the job, perhaps for the first time in Indian criminal jurisprudence history.In a series of recent testimonies via video-conferencing from an unidentified prison in the US to prosecutors trying 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai, Headley had said for the second time that Ishrat was Lashkar terrorist. The 19-year old Khalsa College student Ishrat Jahan was killed along with three others in Ahmadabad outskirts on June 15, 2004.Headley, 54, a US citizen partly of Pakistani descent, was sentenced on 24 January 2013 to 35 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release. There is no federal parole. He was convicted for federal terrorism crimes relating to his role in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and a subsequent proposed attack on Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark. Headley escaped much harsh and far longer sentence by pleaded guilty to all charges after his arrest in October 2009. Immediately after his arrest, Headley began cooperating with authorities.UNI PRA RSA 2046
-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0384-616566.Xml
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