Ishrat row figures in Par committee; IB officer gets BJP backing

The controversy brewing over the role of Intelligence Bureau officer Rajendra Kumar in Ishrat Jahan fake encounter killing case in Gujarat figured in a Parliamentary committee meeting on Tuesday as Bharatiya Janata party members claimed all the four were Lashker-e-Tayiba terrorists.

Addressing a meeting of the Consultative Committee for the home ministry, BJP leaders Vinay Katiyar and Yogi Aditya Nath said targeting the IB special director was fraught with the danger of lowering the morale of sleuths who worked relentlessly to keep anti-national elements at bay.

The BJP leaders alleged Ishrat was a terrorist as her name had figured in the website of LeT and she was accompanying two known Pakistani terrorists when the encounter took place, an official who attended the meeting, said.

They said the CBI's reported move to arrest and prosecute Kumar would only hamper the fight against terrorists. "Ishrat was a known terrorist. She went to Faizabad and was a member of LeT. The way the IB officer is being hounded, it will only hamper our fight against terrorists as tomorrow no intelligence officer will share information," Katiyar told PTI.

The case pertains to killing of four people, including 19-year-old Ishrat from Mumbra, and the allegation is that the four were in detention of Gujarat Police before they were killed in a stage-managed encounter in 2004.