lauding the “independent” judicial system for discharging BJP chief Amit Shah from Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the charge against him was without any basis and it was a “cause of concern” that the CBI allowed itself to be misused.
“Without analysing the evidence in detail, the media allowed itself to report as was briefed by the CBI. Even a vital noting on the CBI file that the implication of Amit Shah was necessary so that the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi could be implicated, was no news for them,” he wrote on Facebook.
The Minister said he was relieved at the fact the “independent judicial system” in India has vindicated Shah after hearing the lawyers of the CBI and Sohrabuddin's brother where both opposed the petition for discharge.
“The charge was without any basis. The fact that the CBI allowed itself to be misused is a cause for concern. Since I had analysed the alleged evidence, both during investigation and after the filing of the charge sheet, I was amongst the few voices which had consistently maintained in the past three years that the prosecution of Amit Shah was a case of 'No Evidence',” he wrote.
Giving details of a letter he wrote as the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2013, Jaitley said the charges were filed against Shah at the behest of the then Government.
In the letter cited by him, Jaitley had written that the CBI investigated the case but did not investigate any of the four points, on the basis of which the case was referred to the CBI, which were the points found lacking in Gujarat police investigation.
“Shockingly, when the legal department of the CBI opined that there was no case against Amit Shah, the same was responded to by the Supervisory Officer of the CBI, putting up a 'Note' by observing that the arrest of Amit Shah would enable the CBI to get some more witnesses particularly the police officers since they would then feel intimidated,” he had said.
Referring to the Sohrabuddin encounter case in his letter, Jaitley had said, “The probable purpose of the CBI in this case was to try and implicate the political establishment of Gujarat, setting aside the pretence of federal character of India's governance. The CBI targeted Amit Shah with the ultimate desire of implicating Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat”.
He had claimed that Shah was arrested by the CBI though there was no prosecutable evidence against him. “The ground on which the Supreme Court transferred the case to the CBI was that the investigation involved inter-State ramifications and the Andhra Pradesh angle of the matter had not been probed. As a matter of fact the Congress Government in Andhra Pradesh did not cooperate in the investigation by Gujarat police which is a matter of record,” he had said.
Jaitley had said Prajapati encounter case was built up by the CBI as an extension to the Sohrabuddin case and Shah was implicated merely on the grounds that he was in regular touch with an IPS officer who was later made an accused in the case.
He had reasoned that since IPS officer RK Pandian was the SP, IB (Intelligence), Shah was in regular contact with him as Minister of State for Home as the former was looking after political activities and agitations.
The BJP leader had said former Home Minister of Rajasthan Gulab Chand Kataria was implicated by the CBI in the Prajapati encounter case. He pointed out several alleged anomalies in the case built by the CBI against Kataria and said the charge that he met IPS DG Vanzara is false as he was not in Rajasthan but away in Mumbai to attend a BJP conclave. Moreover, the meeting was said to have taken place in December 2005 when Sohrabuddin was already dead.
