New Delhi: The
CBI will soon declare that it has found no evidence of terrorist
leanings for 19-year-old Ishrat Jehan, who was killed by the Gujarat
police in 2004 along with three men.
Sources say that in its next
chargesheet, to be filed within the next two weeks, the agency will say
that Ishrat was "an innocent college girl", presenting a boldface
controversy for chief minister Narendra Modi, who is in the running for Prime Minister.
The
BJP has already alleged that the ruling Congress, unable to politically
combat Mr Modi's surging popularity, is using the CBI to question his
credentials and mar his reputation as the national elections approach.
In
its first chargesheet presented in a Gujarat court in July, the CBI
accused seven senior policemen of murdering Ishrat and her three male
companions in "cold blood" and of planting an AK-56 at the scene of the
shooting to portray the victims as terrorists.
One of those officers, DG Vanzara, who was then Deputy Commissioner of the Amedabad Crime Branch, wrote an explosive letter to Mr Modi from jail recently.
He alleged that Mr Modi's close aide, Amit Shah,
who was Home Minister when Ishrat was killed, was aware of the police's
actions, but that the cops have now been betrayed by a weak state
government. The senior officer repeated the defense that his team was
trying to fight Pakistani terrorists.
The CBI says that Mr
Vanazara has refused to cooperate and share more details of the
accusations he made in his note against Mr Shah. So far, the CBI has not
interrogated Mr Shah, or linked either him or Mr Modi to its
investigation.
