Slain Ishrat Jahan was affiliated to LeT, Headley tells Mumbai court

David Coleman Headley, a prime accused in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, said on Thursday that Ishrat Jahan, killed in a 2004 police encounter in Ahmadabad, was affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

New Delhi Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 11 Feb 2016, 02:55 PM
Updated : 11 Feb 2016, 02:59 PM

India’s ruling and opposition parties have reacted sharply to the revelation.
 
“Headley’s disclosure today has proved that Ishrat Jahan was connected to the terrorist organisation,” said senior BJP leader Sahnawaj Hussain.
 
The Congress, however, said the revelation needed to be investigated. “If David Headley has made some assertions, let them be investigated,” said Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari.
 
Deposing before a Mumbai court on Thursday, Headley claimed in a video conference that the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi had told him about a botched up operation by Muzammil Bhatt in India.
 
“The operation was about shooting the police at some naka (patrol). One woman LeT named Ishrat Jehan was involved. Muzammil Bhatt was the head of our group before Sajid Mir," he told the court. 
 
Headley, however, denied the involvement of any woman suicide bomber but later named Ishrat Jehan as an LeT operative.
 
Headley’s deposition from US continued for the third day on Thursday after being postponed on Wednesday following a technical snag in the video conferencing. 
 
Jehan and three others, including Javed Sheikh, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana, were shot dead by the police at Kotarpur, in Gujarat, on June 15, 2004.
 
The police alleged that Ishrat and her associates were LeT operatives, who were plotting to assassinate the then Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi.
 
Subsequently, allegations that Jahan had been killed in a fake encounter were investigated.
  [2/11/16, 8:26 PM] Shihabur Rahman (shihabur.rahman@bdnews24.com):In 2009, an Ahmedabad Metropolitan court had ruled at end of prolonged proceedings that the encounter had been staged.
 
But the Gujarat state government challenged the decision in the High Court.
 
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s premier investigating agency, which had been asked to probe further, and concluded that the shooting was indeed cold-blooded murder.