Naming ambulances after Ishrat wrong: Maharashtra CM

Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis said it was wrong to operate an ambulance named after “terrorist” Ishrat Jahan and asked those doing so to discontinue the service. Speaking with mediapersons at Vidhan Bhavan during the “Meet the Press” programme, Mr Fadnavis announced that he would seek information on the issue of three ambulances being operated in memory of alleged Lashkar-e-Tayyaba operative Ishrat Jahan.

“We will seek information. People running such ambulances should themselves shut the ambulance service. It is wrong to operate an ambulance in the name of someone who was a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) operative, based on evidence coming forth. They should learn that appeasing terrorists for the sake of votes is detrimental to the country’s interests,” he said.

NCP legislator from Ishrat’s town Mumbra, Jitendra Awhad had inaugurated the ambulances in 2011 and called it “Shaheed Ishrat Jahan Ambulance’ run by NCO My Mumbra Foundation.

Mr Fadnavis recalled that while deposing via a video-link from the US, 55-year-old terrorist David Headley had told the court that Ishrat Jahan was an operative of LeT. The nineteen-year-old Mumbra resident was killed in an encounter in Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004, along with three others, all accused of planning an attack on then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi.

The veracity of the accusations have been subject of a long legal battle. Ishrat was a second-year college student and lived in Mumbra’s Rashid Compound.