Headley’s tall tales

The nation-wide conversation on convicted terrorist David Headley's daily testimony on the Mumbai attacks has suddenly taken a dramatic and domestic dimension. During the first three days, Headley was happily living up to the pardon given by the Indian courts on the condition he revealed all he knew about the attack. He had disburdened himself earlier to a National Investigating Agency (NIA) team permitted limited access to the man currently serving 35 years in a US prison. The rest of the story would never come out because the former US intelligence asset will have enough on his masters as insurance. That is why US intelligence has ensured he will never be extradited to India till he completes the sentence. By then Headley will be 90.

All these declarations of guilt, relayed by the newly minted Padma Shri Ujjwal Nikam, were buttressing the negative public perception about Pakistan. New Delhi was starting to feel uncomfortable about reopening high-level contacts with Pakistan before it had fulfilled its vow of extracting retribution for the Mumbai, if not for the Pathankot, attack. Then, Headley disclosed a conversation he had overheard while plotting for the Mumbai attacks. On being prompted by Nikam, he claimed Ishrat Jahan, shot in cold blood in Gujarat, was a suicide bomber for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) out to kill Modi, the then Chief Minister.

This claim from a stool pigeon has set a cat among political pigeons. Union Minister Rajnath Singh has sought an apology from the Opposition in his eagerness to sidle closer to Modi. But he has overlooked a probe that found the killing fake. Just like Headley's testimony about Pakistan's role will serve no material purpose, his claim about Ishrat Jahan's involvement with LeT will not change the fact that uniformed men had carried out a cold-blooded murder. There are bound to be few takers for this attempt to whitewash a crime by giving its victim a terrorist tag on the basis of a very dubious double agent. The post-Ishrat Jahan 'revelation' hoo-ha brings no credit to us as a nation or to our judicial system.