A file photo of Chidambaram.

NEW DELHI: P Chidambaram in his capacity as home minister had personally overseen controversial changes in the Centre’s affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case in 2009 to drop any references to her Lashkar-e-Taiba links, G K Pillai, home secretary at the time, told TOI on Saturday.

According to Pillai, Chidambaram recalled the file from the joint secretary a month after the original affidavit — which described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives — was filed in SC.

“Mr Chidambaram, who was then the home minister, had asked for the file from the joint secretary, saying that the affidavit needed to be reworked. Only after the affidavit was revised, as directed by the minister, did the file come to me,” Pillai told TOI.

Chidambaram did not respond to calls and text messages seeking his version. The original affidavit, filed by the home ministry in Supreme Court in August 2009, had cited IB inputs that Ishrat and her three aides — Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana — were part of a Lashkar sleeper cell. It had objected to a CBI probe into the encounter.

In the second affidavit filed in September 2009, the home ministry said the IB inputs did not constitute conclusive proof of the terror antecedents of those killed. “All such inputs do not constitute proof... The Centre is in no way concerned with any police action nor does it condone or endorse any unjustified or excessive action,” said the affidavit, as reported by TOI on April 1, 2010.

“If on a proper consideration of the facts it is found that an independent inquiry and investigation has to be carried by CBI or otherwise, the Union of India would have no objection to such a course and would abide by such orders which the court may deem fit to pass,” it added.

G K Pillai on Saturday said that not only Javed Shaikh and the two Pakistanis killed in the encounter were LeT operatives, but even Ishrat knew that “something was wrong”. “Ishrat and Javed stayed as a couple at hotels/lodges in UP and even Ahmedabad. She was clearly a cover for him as well as well as others of the module,” he said.

Ishrat was hailed as a martyr by LeT on its website as well as its mouthpiece Ghazwa Times, though this was later withdrawn.

The focus on her Lashkar links was renewed in 2010 when LeT operative David Coleman Headley, quoting senior commander of the terror, Zaki-urRahman Lakhvi, told National Investigation Agency that the girl from Mumbra was member of a terror cell. However, two paragraphs which dwelt on this part of his interrogation were dropped from the final report submitted to the Gujarat high court later that year.

Earlier this month, Headley again referred to his conversation with Lakhvi to tell a Mumbai court through video-conference that Ishrat was part of women’s wing of LeT.



In Video: Ishrat case: Former Home secretary GK Pillai admits to political intervention