Who influenced Chidambaram to tweak Ishrat case affidavit: BJP

New Delhi, April 19:

Targeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday asked as to who influenced the then home minister P. Chidambaram’s decision in 2009 to tweak the second affidavit in Ishrat Jahan case.

“In the first affidavit filed on August 6, 2009, the government put forth that Ishrat Jahan was an LeT operative. Merely 45 days later, on September 30, the second affidavit signed by the then home minister P. Chidambaram drops this point and digresses into other details,” BJP spokesman Sambit Patra said here on Tuesday.

“We want to know what changed in those 45 days? Who gave Chidambaram the command to change the affidavit because there is only one command centre in the Congress party and that is 10 Janpath,” Patra said, referring to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s residential address.

He also accused the Congress of compromising on the crucial issue of national security in order to get political mileage.

“Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and P. Chidambaram could not tolerate Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, but they could tolerate terrorism,” he said.

Mumbai college girl Ishrat Jahan and her three alleged associates Pranesh Gopinath Pilai, Amjad Ali and Jishan Johar were killed by Gujarat Police in an allegedly staged shootout near Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

Gujarat Police had described the four as Pakistani-controlled terrorists who came from Jammu and Kashmir to assassinate Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat.

In February this year, LeT operative David Headley told a Mumbai court that Ishrat Jahan was a member of the Pakistan-based terror group. (IANS)