By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Kochi: The news reports regarding the Lashkar e Toiba connection of Ishrat Jahan and others is a way to try to change the course of the investigation, opined Gopinathan Pilla, father of Javed alias Pranesh Kumar who was killed in the encounter. He was responding to the news reports which said that US terrorist Headley had referred to the Lashkar links of the four persons killed in police encounter in Ahmedabad in 2004.
Mr Pilla said that his son and other innocent persons were shot dead by the Gujarat police for political gains in 2004, according to reports. Some forces are trying to create suspicions at a time when the legal battle to prove the innocence of Javed is going on. He said that he began the legal battle as he was sure his son was not a terrorist. He added that there were bad intentions in spreading such fake news about the matter when the trial on the case was to begin on July 14th.
Media had last day reported that David Coleman Headley, the Lashkar e Toiba terrorist and US citizen now under arrest in USA, had confessed the LeT connection of Ishrat Jahan and Javed, when he was interrogated by Indian officials. Mr Pilla said that the law department or the NIA which questioned Headley had not revealed any such fact.
Mr Pilla’s son Pranesh Kumar alias Javed was one among the four persons killed in a police encounter in Ahmedabad in 2004. The others killed were two men and Ishrat Jahan Sheikh of Mumbai. Doubts were raised then also regarding the truth behind the police version that the four were Lashkar e Toiba terrorists and had come to kill Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. And recently, the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Judicial Magistrate SP Tamang found in his investigation that the encounter was fake.
Gopinathan Pilla, father of Javed, is on a legal battle to prove the innocence of his son. Mr Pilla had submitted a petition in the Supreme Court requesting an investigation into the fake encounter case. The Supreme Court had reportedly directed the High Court to try the case in six months. Accordingly, the trial of the case is supposed to begin on July 14.