IB cites FBI note to defend director in Ishrat case

The Intelligence Bureau (IB), in a bid to defend one of its special directors in the fake Gujarat encounter case, has shared a an note from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US, which says that top Lashkar-e-Toiba commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi had confessed to Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley about recruiting Ishrat Jahan as a female suicide bomber.

Perhaps indicating the militant background of another person, who was part of the module which the Central Bureau if Investigation (CBI) suspects was eliminated by Gujarat Police in an allegedly stage-managed encounter on June 15, 2004, the IB has also drawn the attention of investigators to a disclosure made by Lashkar terrorist Shahid Mehamood Basra of Pakistan, who was arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir Police around the same time.

Basra is said to have told the police that LeT in-charge of India operations Muzammil had tasked Babbar alias Abdul Adnan, also a Pakistani recruit, with carrying out terrorist attacks against VIPs.

Basra had claimed that he was directed to give logistical support to Babbar.

The IB says that Basra, after seeing the TV footage of 2004 encounter, accepted that one of the four killed was Babbar.

The CBI suspects that Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Gopinath Pilai, Amjad Ali and Jishan Johar were killed by the Gujarat Police in a fake encounter.

The agency had written a letter to the IB on February 13, listing out the charges against Rajendra Kumar, who was posted as joint director of the intelligence agency in Ahemdabad.

The CBI suspects that Kumar was in constant touch with Ahmedabad police before and after the encounter, and had gone beyond his professional brief, besides passing on the input of LeT threat to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

In a written reply in defence of each of the allegations against Kumar, the IB, quoting FBI information, said that terrorist David Coleman Headley, currently jailed in America, was told by Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi that Muzammil, whose name figures in many terror attacks on India, had recruited Jahan.