With the controversy over the Ishrat Jahan case intensifying over the last one week, former SIT chief Satish Verma broke his silence on Wednesday.
The IPS officer dismissed the allegations of RVS Mani, former Under Secretary, Internal Security in the Ministry of Home Affairs, that he was tortured with cigarette butts and harassed by Verma to sign on the second affidavit, in which the references to Ishrat Jahan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba links were removed.
Speaking to India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai and NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain, Verma appeared to set the record straight as he fended himself from the barrage of allegations levelled against him.
Here are the highlights of what Satish Verma has told the media so far:
- Mani’s allegations are reckless.
- I never tortured anyone, it’s all nonsense. If you use torture on a government official like this, he would’ve sought legal remedy and i would’ve been charged with criminal offence.
- Mr. Mani has no direct knowledge of the case. He was not part of the police action or IB operation or intelligence gathering. He was a very low-ranking official in the ministry of home affairs.
- This was a controlled operation by the IB. This may be a brilliant operation, but this is also a fake encounter.
- After laborious CBI investigation, no proof that Ishrat was LeT operative
- This was a pre-meditated murder.
- For 10 days that she was out, she stayed in a couple of places in Ahmedabad and UP and all those places are well-known.
- 10 days is not enough to train someone to become an LeT terrorist and a suicide bomber.
- National security cannot become an excuse for cold-blooded murder of a 19-year-old girl and branding it as collateral damage.
- There was no question of fixing Narendra Modi. I was under no political pressure in case
- (On UPA changing the affidavit in which the references to her alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba links were removed) – I would say these statements are politically motivated.
Former Union Home Secretary G K Pillai on February 25 had said that the affidavit submitted to the Gujarat High Court in 2009 about LeT links of Ishrat Jahan and her accomplices, who were killed in an alleged fake encounter in 2004, was changed at the “political level”.
The then UPA government had submitted two affidavits – one that the four, who were killed in an alleged fake encounter, were terrorists and the second saying there was no conclusive evidence – within two months in 2009.
Unfazed by attacks, Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, who was the Home Minister during that period, stood by the second affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, insisting it was “absolutely correct” and as the minister “I accept the responsibility”.
(With Inputs From PTI)
(Feature Image Source: Twitter)