shrat Jehan was killed along with 3 others in an encounter in Gujarat in 2004. (File photo)
Former Home Secretary GK Pillai, whose recent statements on the Ishrat Jehan killing have stoked a new political battle, had held a different view in 2013.
He had said then that Ishrat Jehan's terror links had not been conclusively proved.
"I don't think there is any conclusive evidence against Ishrat Jahan. Unless any proper investigation is carried out, we will have to give her the benefit of doubt," he had said.
Ishrat, 19, was killed along with three others in 2004 by Gujarat police officers who alleged that she was part of a conspiracy to assassinate then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Last week, Mr Pillai said that he was bypassed when former Home Minister P Chidambaram rewrote a government document to say that there was no proof of Ishrat Jehan's terror links.
The document, submitted to the Gujarat high court in 2009, had originally quoted media and intelligence reports to say Ishrat was an operative of the Lashkar e Taiba. But it was changed the very next month.
Mr Pillai said the revised document was drafted by Mr Chidambaram who "called a lower functionary" and dictated it.
The comments have been seized by the BJP as proof that the Congress tried to project Ishrat Jehan as a college student killed in cold blood on the Gujarat government's orders.
The former home secretary was also quoted as saying: "I would say that (Ishrat) knew something was wrong and an unmarried Muslim girl would
not go with a married person to different places, etc. spend the night outside....perhaps she knew that something was happening. She could have been a cover."
Asked to explain his contradictory statements, Mr Pillai said today: "My comment in 2013 was in a particular context. The context was not to vilify a dead person unless further investigation threw up more evidence. I have said even now that evidence is not conclusive about Ishrat's LeT membership. But her conduct of travelling with Javed raises questions that something was amiss."