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The Lashkar website seems genuine
Isharat's family lawyer says the Lashkar website
that claimed that she was a member could possibly be
fake. That does not seem to be the case.
On Thursday, July 16, news channels flashed the latest update Ishrat Jahan, the Khalsa College girl from Mumbra who was killed by the Gujarat police in an encounter. The website of the parent organization of the Lashkar-e-toiba had said on its website that Ishrat Jahan was indeed a member of the organization, and was seated in the front seat of the car with her husband when she was shot dead by the Gujarat police.
By evening, the Gujarat police said that the news confirms their claims that Ishrat Jahan was indeed a terrorist. They say that indeed it is sad that they have to point to the terrorist organizations website to prove to the disbelieving that Ishrat Jahan was indeed a member.
The claim is immediately refuted by Ishrat's family. Her sisters say to television cameras that she was definitely not married, while Ishrat's mother's lawyer claims that the website was probably put up by the Gujarat police itself, and that anyone can create a website.
We decided to verify this claim.
The website pointed out by Gujarat police is http://www.jamatuddawa.org
A WHOIS check can be done to verify when a website was created. This is possible through any domain name registration company's website. You can do this yourself on
www.register.com
The WHOIS check revealed that the domain was registered in April 2004. That is 2 months before encounter death of Ishrat. Suspicious? The website of the Lashkar's parent organization is only 2 months old?
The postal address on which the site was registered was a Lahore, Pakistan address. That does not mean much, as its quite possible to submit fake addresses during domain registration.
Anti-climax - the website http://www.jamatuddawa.org
was registered only two months back, true. But turns out that this is only a new domain name. The official site which is almost 2 years old was registered in 2002 in the name of
http://www.jamatdawa.org
. This site seems authentic, as several islamist websites link to this website. This site currently redirects to the new domain name
http://www.jamatuddawa.org
registered in March 2004. So essentially its the same site, and it is two years old.
It is not ordinarily possible that the Gujarat police planned this encounter 2 years in advance. It is also not possible that other similarly themed websites would link to it unless it was the genuine item.
None of this proves that Ishrat Jahan was a member of the LeT, but it definitely proves that her family's claim yesterday was not based on facts.
ASHISH SHETTY
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