NEW DELHI: The Union Home Ministry has rubbished the charge that BK Prasad, additional secretary, had tutored a witness (former ministry officer) while conducting probe into the missing documents related to the Ishrat Jahan encounter case. A media report on Thursday alleged that probe panel head Prasad not only informed the witness about possible questions he would ask but also suggested him the answers.
After the controversy, Prasad released a statement denying the charges. He said, “All officers enquired by me have been senior officers in the government and are fully capable of answering questions relating to the probe on their own and there is no question of the alleged tutoring.” Prasad further said he had conducted a free and fair enquiry and released the statement of witness officer Ashok Kumar.
As per Ashok Kumar’s statement, accessed by Express, he was asked by Prasad whether he had received a missing Ishrat file from the then Joint Secretary Dharmendra Sharma as marked by him. Kumar replied he was on tour. “I was on tour and even after return from tour, Director (NE) did not show me or hand over this file to me. I have during my entire tenure, neither dealt with this case nor kept this file in my custody.”
To the second question of Prasad that in whose custody the missing papers could be now, Kumar replied “it would be very difficult to say.” Kumar served as Director in the Home Ministry during Jan-Dec 2011.
Congress leader and former home minister P Chidambaram claimed the five missing documents completely vindicate the position he had taken. Terming the entire episode a ‘fake controversy’ created by the NDA government, he said the sequence of events conclusively establishes that he had acted in a totally transparent manner.