‘Headley’s info can’t be given’
The government on Tuesday said it cannot disclose any information given by 26/11 terror attack convict David Headley owing to a pact with the US which gave the Indian agencies access to question him.
As controversy raged on whether Headley had spoken about alleged terror links of Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in June 2004, home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said he is yet to receive a report from the NIA clarifying whether Ishrat had terror linkages or not. Responding to questions on whether Headley, in his confessional statement, did not take the name of Ishrat, he said, “The (NIA) report is yet to come... Whatever Headley has said, it was before FBI. And we have an agreement between FBI and NIA. So, we cannot disclose it.”
The home ministry had asked the NIA to find out whether the girl was a terrorist.
following a request from Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh.
The stated position of the NIA has always been that they did not find any evidence to suggest Ishrat Jahan’s terror links. Following interrogation of Headley, the NIA had given two separate reports to the then home secretary G.K. Pillai in June 2010.
While the first was in the form of a summary or synopsis of Headley’s interrogation, the second was a comprehensive detailed report. Incidentally, the synopsis did state that David Headley mentioned Ishrat Jahan’s name in context of being an LeT operative. But this was excluded from the detailed report given subsequently. The reason for this exclusion was explained verbally by the NIA top brass to the home ministry. The NIA claimed that Headley had merely made a “passing reference” about Ishrat being an LeT operative. In absence of any concrete evidence, reference to Ishrat Jahan was left out of NIA’s final report as it would not have stood legal scrutiny in a court of law.
It was first in March 2010, when the FBI in a communication to the Intelligence Bureau claimed that Headley in his disclosure to them to had referred Ishrat Jahan’s name as being an LeT operative. But the FBI communication was silent on any evidence to corroborate this. Quoting the FBI input, the Intelligence Bureau, in turn, circulated a note to the MHA mentioning that Ishrat Jahan had terror links. In February this year, the IB wrote to the CBI mentioning the same FBI input on Ishrat.
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