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In a sharp attack on P Chidambaram, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said the second affidavit filed in the Gujarat High Court by the United Progressive Alliance government in the Ishrat Jahan case was "fraudulent".
Saying the encounter in which Jahan and her other alleged LeT operatives were killed in Gujarat was "honest", he asked if the Congress believed it was fake why did it then allow those officers involved in the actual shootout to get bail on the 90th day by not filing chargesheets and make them a witness.
In an interview to Times Now, he said the first affidavit by the UPA government mentioning her terror links "was not ambiguous. It was as clear as day light. The second affidavit was fraudulent."
Asked if the UPA government played around with the intelligence framework, the minister said, "Obviously."
Chidambaram had on Monday justified the filing of second affidavit as absolutely correct and as minister owned up the decision.
Recalling his 2013 blog on the issue, he said he had raised questions about allowing CBI to investigate the Intelligence Bureau operations and compromising of national security.
"Obviously when the encounter took place, there were some officers who were physically present in the encounter. The CBI arrested all of them. It consciously did not file a chargesheet within 90 days. So those officers were let out on bail," he said.
He claimed that those offers were then "asked to give statements under Section 164 against senior political leaders of the Gujarat government."
Those officers, he said, were not even named in the chargesheet.
On Congress president Sonia Gandhi's statement that she stood by what Chidambaram said, Jaitley said the series of facts brought out by him "make out a perfect case of how a concoction" was taking place.
"This has been a tradition of this political party. After all didn't they cook up the fake bank account against V P Singh when they saw a possible threat in him becoming a future Prime Minister," he said.
Fake bank accounts in VP Singh's sons' name were opened in St Kitts but this time "they were trying to fabricate a case of murder in this manner. This is the extent which the Congress party can stoop."