It was the first spell of monsoon. Shamima Shaikh and three of her daughters were lazily surfing channels in their two-room apartment in Hasmat Park in the dreary township of Mumbra on the outskirts of Mumbai. Even as they settled down to watch a popular family melodrama, there was loud knocking on the door. Shamima's eldest daughter Zeenat Jehan opened the door only to find herself facing a battery of cameras and microphones. Mediapeople asked her about her sister Ishrat Jehan. Bewildered by the clamour, Zeenat just about made sense of the fact that Ishrat had been killed in a police encounter the previous morning on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

It was as if melodrama had come knocking and soon enough the lower middle-class family found themselves unwittingly starring in one. The second child of Mohammed and Shamima, the 19-year-old, five ft two inches, good looking and seemingly happy go lucky Ishrat was gunned down with three other alleged operatives of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). They were allegedly on a mission to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Ishrat was with her friend Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai and two others, Zeeshan Johar alias Janbaaz and Amjad Ali Rana alias Salim, identified as LeT suicide squad members and citizens of Pakistan.

As the family rushed to the neighbours to borrow a newspaper, the news had already gripped this small hick town and the nation. "This can't be true" was the initial public reaction. Zeenat claims, "Ishrat has never killed an ant; just forget about her going on a murder mission. How can a caring person like her, who fends for her entire family, be a terrorist?"

Testimonials of Ishrat's good character and behaviour poured in from school and college teachers, neighbours and friends. To Safia Qureshi, a neighbour, "Ishrat was a model daughter and sister who was mature enough at a tender age to support the family." Down south, in Kerala, M.R. Gopinatha Pillai, 67, a middle-class farmer and Congress activist, couldn't believe that his son Pranesh (alias Javed) could be involved in terrorist activities.

Conspiracy swirled with cordite as politicians barged into the din. The pre-election environment in Maharashtra triggered curious reactions, charges and demands. NCP leader Vasant Dhavkare rushed to donate Rs 1 lakh to the family, Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde was cornered in Delhi and pressured to hand over the case to the CBI, M. Siddiqui, a Mumbai Congressman, said the encounter was engineered to save Modi from being ousted and Abu Azmi of the Samajwadi Party dubbed the encounter a fake and promised to take it up with the President of India.

The doubts over the genuineness of the encounter are not unexpected. A self-confessed gangster Ketan Tirodkar has alleged on a sworn affidavit in the MCOCA court in Mumbai that he and encounter specialist Daya Nayak delivered one Sadiq Mehtar as a target for an encounter for the Gujarat Police in January 2003. Mehtar was dubbed a LeT operative and killed. While the court has admitted the statement as a petition and is looking into the charges, the credibility of the police has been seriously eroded.

The June 15 encounter also raises several questions ranging from the timing of the incident to the manner in which the police were found scrambling to prove their case. Perhaps it is the lack of credibility that dogs the police force-particularly the Gujarat Police-across the country.

But P.P. Pande, joint commissioner of police, Ahmedabad Crime Branch, doesn't think so and brushed off allegations of the encounter being stage managed: "Thanks to the coordination of intelligence and security agencies, we have been able to avert a great calamity."

As the air cleared, police investigations revealed Ishrat was everything her family and neighbours believed. But she was also connected with LeT operatives. Typically, fundamentalist groups target young, educated non-stereotypes for indoctrination. Intelligence agents in Kashmir and Delhi have been regularly intercepting messages of LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad modules aimed at Modi and VHP factotum Pravin Togadia.

A message was intercepted in May in which LeT's Pakistan-based chief of Indian operations (barring Kashmir), Muzzamil alias Tariq, spoke to Javed. When Muzzamil asked him, "Lalaji kahan hain (Where is Advani)?" Javed replied, "Woh apne ghar pe hain (He is at home)." Then Muzzamil said, "Mubarak ka ab kuch karo (Do something about Modi)." Javed replied, "Khad ka intezam karo (Arrange for weapons and ammunition)." The names of the two Pakistani terrorists Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali also figured. Terrorists from Kashmir and the distraught in Gujarat seem to have formed an unusual coalition.

As unusual as the pairing of Javed and Ishrat. Contrary to rumours, police reveal that there was no love angle. Like Manisha Koirala in Mani Ratnam's Dil Se, Ishrat had no romantic links with Javed but an allegiance to a cause. Says Amar Jadhav, DCP, crime branch, Thane, "Prima facie evidence suggests that Ishrat wasn't innocent. Her role and involvement are matters of investigation and deep concern."

Police investigations reveal that Javed offered to get Ishrat a decent job in a good company and convinced her mother to send her for interviews to other cities, including Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Ishrat also acquired a cell phone and fashionable clothes.

In fact, Javed and Ishrat made their first recce of Ahmedabad on March 13. Police are now scrutinising the CCTV footage at the Akshardham Temple to ascertain their second visit in May. Apparently, Javed and Ishrat, who had checked into an Ahmedabad hotel on May 15, had also visited the Akshardham Temple before leaving for Lucknow where they met Salim alias Rana on May 17. Rana accompanied them back to Pune where he stayed with Javed. What is not known is when and where the fourth member Janbaaz joined them.

DIARIES OF JAVED AND SALIM

Plot to target Narendra Modi, L.K. Advani, Pravin Togadia, Bal Thackeray, Vinay Katiyar and Uma Bharati.

Details of making explosives and use of incendiary chemicals, besides drawings of five types of ID circuits.

Details of payments made to other LeT operatives.

UNEASY CALM: Javed with wife Sajda and child

Javed's own connections and involvement are less of a mystery. Born Pramesh Kumar Pillai and baptised Javed Ghulam Muhammed Shaikh, he grew up in Thamarakkulam village in Alappuzha district of Kerala before he came to Pune in 1988 to train as an electrician and worked for various contractors including Ishrat's father in 1992. Besides an income Javed also acquired notoriety. He had been booked for rioting , grievous criminal trespass and possession of lethal weapons. Thereafter he worked in Dubai between 1998 and 2002. Armed with three passports Javed had apparently met Muzammil during his visit to Oman and joined the LeT. Javed last visited his father in the blue Indica with his children and returned to Pune on June 5. His father next saw him in photographs splashed in newspapers.

It isn't clear as yet as to what triggered the public uproar. Perhaps it was the cold brutality of the encounter laid bare in the pictures splashed by TV channels and newspapers. Public perception revolved around an intriguing contradiction which accepted the apparent involvement of Javed and the two Pakistanis but refused to believe that Ishrat could have had anything to do with the trio despite her travels with them. This is not surprising because Ishrat didn't fit the stereotype. But then neither did Waleed Alsheri, who held a degree in aeronautical science, and Mohammed Atta, who studied at Technical University of Hamburg, two of those involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack. If the WTC attack was the response of warped minds to humiliations perceived and real, the enrolment of an Ishrat into a terrorist module is a symptom of desperation. In a sense the uproar over the killing of Ishrat Jehan symbolises the disquiet in civil society.

-with M.G. Radhakrishnan