'Ishrat was LeT suicide bomber'

Mumbai - Headley deposition backs Gujarat cops version of 2004 encounter in which 3 were killed.

Former Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley confirmed on Thursday that Ishrat Jahan, a Mumbai teenager who was killed in an encounter by the Gujarat police in 2004, was in fact a suicide bomber of the terrorist outfit.
Headley, who continued with his video deposition from an unidentified jail in the US, told special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam that he had first heard of "a botched up operation" from LeT commander Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi in 2004. Lakhvi had told him that a wom-an member of the LeT had been killed in a botched-up operation launched by Muzammil Butt, an-other operative of the terror outfit. He was told that a woman LeT member was among those killed in the police encounter. Nikam then gave him three names from which Headley picked up Ishrat's name. He said Ishrat was a member of the LeT and had worked closely with the organisation's women's wing. The encounter with the Gujarat police took place on June 15, 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Ishrat and three others (Javed Shaikh, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar) were killed in the encounter. The state police said the four armed terrorists were planning to kill Narendra Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat then. The encounter had ballooned into a major political controversy, with the Congress (which was in power at the centre then), accusing Modi (now the BJP Prime Minister) of getting an 'innocent' teenager killed. The Gujarat high court had set up a special investigation team to probe the charges against the then state home minister Amit Shah (now the BJP president). The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had also asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to conduct the probe in 2013. However, the central government was caught in an embarrassing situation when the Intelligence Bureau claimed that it had alerted the Gujarat government about Ishrat and the other LeT operatives. Later, a team of the National Investigative Agency had also got information from Headley confirming that Ishrat had been an LeT member. The BJP accused the Congress of intentionally suppressing this bit of information. Headley, a Pakistani-American, was arrested in the US in 2010. Though he was sentenced to 35 years in jail, he turned approver and won a reprieve, with the American government agreeing not to extradite him to India. On Thursday, he told the court that one Major Iqbal of the ISI had given him $25,000 before his visit to India in September 2006. The ISI official also gave him fake Indian currencies.
 

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