he Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs are coming under increasing pressure from the Congress party to abandon Intelligence Bureau special director Rajendra Kumar, whose role in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case is being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Kumar retires on 31 July.

Highly placed sources said that IB director S. Asif Ibrahim had sought a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to apprise him of the repercussions that targeting Kumar will have on the functioning of the IB. However, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) expressed its helplessness in stopping the alleged witch-hunt being carried out by the CBI.

Interestingly, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who was until recently refusing to comment on the Ishrat case, announced on Wednesday that there was no question of protecting any IB officers if they were found guilty. Until the last week of June, the MHA was saying that there was not sufficient evidence against Kumar. MHA and IB officers are questioning Shinde's latest statement that he was still trying to find out about Ishrat's antecedents. "He has been the Home Minister for close to a year and still does not know about her! If he was so sure that she was not a terrorist, he would have stated it earlier. However, he chose to take a safer route," an IB officer said.

Sources say that Shinde shifted his stand after Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh met him on 5 July.

"Despite the best efforts of the IB director, it appears that CBI director Ranjit Sinha has the upper hand at present. No one knows what will happen in the future. However it's clear that the IB has been pushed into a corner, which will have an adverse impact on officers' morale of across the country. Speak to any officer who is stationed in a sensitive post in Kashmir or Chhattisgarh and you will be able to gauge the mood," the IB official stated.

"It has never happened before that an IB director, who is considered to be the eyes and the ears of the government, is running from the Home Secretary to the National Security Adviser and now to the Prime Minister to complain that his officers are being harassed," an MHA officer commented. Earlier, Ibrahim had sent a formal letter to the MHA against the CBI.

Officers allege that the CBI is being driven by political motives and that an IB officer cannot be forced to disclose the source of his information. "The CBI is questioning the truth behind the intelligence inputs. What if our source is an insider who is working in a terrorist organisation? Will we reveal his name? The affidavit filed by the Home Ministry in August 2009 was not based solely on the inputs given by Rajendra Kumar. Police agencies from other states were also involved in the whole operation. Their inputs were taken before placing the affidavit in the High Court," an IB officer stated. However, he added that the onus will primarily be on Kumar to prove the veracity of the facts that were stated in the affidavit.

Officials said that after Rajendra Kumar, the next person who will be targeted by the CBI is former Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah of the BJP. "And eventually, the spotlight will shift to Narendra Modi,"

an IB officer said.