J&K link opens up: 13 days after Ishrat died, man who tied her to LeT killed

Ishrat, 3 others were shot dead on June 15, 2004.

Behind the political firestorm generated by former Home Secretary G K Pillai’s revelations that the Ishrat Jahan killing was a planned intelligence operation is the silence of J&K police whose investigation “established” the identity of aLashkar operative killed in that alleged fake encounter.

On June 26, 2004, J&K police arrested “a Lashkar-e-Toiba commander, Shahid Mehmood”, whose alleged disclosures were subsequently cited in affidavits by Gujarat and the Union Home Ministry to establish that one of the three men killed with Ishrat was “Amjad Ali alias Salim alias Babar, a Pakistani terrorist”.

Mehmood also allegedly revealed that Babar “had been dispatched to Ahmedabad by Muzzamil (a senior LeT commander) for a VIP target”.

However, on June 28, 2004, 13 days after Ishrat was gunned down by Gujarat police and as doubts began to emerge over the killing, Mahmood and another Pakistani militant Zahid Hafiz were gunned down in an alleged staged encounter in Aastan Pora on the outskirts of Srinagar.

J&K police also claimed to have busted a Lashkar module in Srinagar and arrested 18 men who they claimed had provided logistic support to Mehmood and Zahid. Police pointed to the “connections of this module” with the “suspected LeT operatives who were gunned down in Ahmedabad on June 15”.