Plea in Supreme Court against P Chidambaram for contempt

The Supreme Court was moved on Monday for initiating contempt of court proceedings against former home minister P. Chidambaram for filing a “false affidavit” in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case.

Advocate M.L. Sharma, who has filed this petition in public interest, said that by filing a false affidavit, the former home minister had committed contempt and perjury. He also sought quashing of the false fake encounter case registered against Gujarat police officers based on this affidavit.

He said on February 11, 2016, he came to know about the judicial proceedings and statement of David Headley, who conspired with the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) in plotting the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, declared that four persons, including Ishrat Jahan, who were killed in June 2004 by the Gujarat police, were part of the LeT and were assigned to kill the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

Mr Sharma said that it is a judicial fact that all four, including Ishrat, killed by the Gujarat police were terrorists.

In June 2004, within planned conspiracy Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) terrorist organization assigned target to their four members, Ishrat Jahan Raza, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra, Maharashtra, Javed Ghulam Sheikh (born as Pranesh Pillai),Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar, to kill Mr. Modi. Gujarat state police claimed that Ishrat Jahan and her associates were Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives based on an affidavit filed by the IB in theGujarat High Court during FBI interrogation that Ishrat Jahan was a Fidayeen. However, this affidavit was changed within few months at the instance of Mr. Chidambaram. As a resul Gujarat police officers are facing false cases, he said and sought a direction to quash the case against the police officers and to initiate contempt of court proceedings against Mr. Chidambaram.