Ahmedabad, Jun 27: The Prime Minister's Office has cleared the decks for the arrest of a senior Intelligence Bureau officer in a case which had brought the intelligence set-up in direct confrontation with CBI.
IB special director Rajinder Kumar is likely to be arrested weeks after a chargesheet is filed in early July by CBI in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case. Kumar is due to retire on July 31 and CBI is under pressure to arrest him only after his retirement.
Kumar will be charged with conspiracy, abduction and multiple murders. In fact, the draft chargesheet describes Kumar as the mastermind of this operation and seeks his early arrest for custodial interrogation - something IB does not want to happen while Kumar is still in service.
Altogether four persons branded as Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists by IB were killed in a fake encounter which took place on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2005. A college student from Mumbra near Mumbai, was a surprise package in a gang which was allegedly out to kill Narendra Modi, in what is now seen as a bogus story scripted by Kumar. Apparently, Kumar knew Modi very well from his days in Chandigarh in he late 90s and used to address him as 'Modibhai'.
The IB had thrown a fit when Kumar was first summoned for interrogation earlier this month. The matter had reached the PMO and the National Security Adviser was asked to intervene. The evidence against Kumar was, however, quite overwhelming and IB had to finally give in because CBI furnished details of Kumar's involvement in multiple dubious encounters.
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