Special CBI court acquits Amit Shah in fake encounter case

A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Mumbai on Tuesday acquitted Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah of charges of murder and criminal conspiracy in two cases of alleged fake encounters nearly a decade ago.

Shah had been charged with ordering the police to carry out extrajudicial killings of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi, in November 2005, and a year hence of the couple’s friend and eyewitness to the earlier encounter, Tulsi Prajapati. Shah was then the home minister in the Narendra Modi-led government in Gujarat. He had to quit as minister when he was arrested in mid-2010 but released on bail three months later.

The BJP welcomed the court decision and said it vindicated its claim that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government misused investigating agencies to trap political opponents. The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) alleged the CBI fielded a junior counsel who spoke for barely 15 minutes in court and deliberately weakened the case against Shah that facilitating his acquittal.

Shah was charged with 37 others in the two cases of alleged fake encounters. He had filed a discharge plea early in the year on the ground that the case was a political conspiracy against him. While the application came up for hearing around mid-December, the CBI opposed it stating Shah was one of the conspirators in the Sohrabuddin and Tulsi Prajapati encounters.

Almost all the accused in the cases have been granted bail by Bombay High Court.

In November 2005, Sohrabuddin and his wife were reportedly abducted by Gujarat's anti-terrorism squad (ATS) and killed in an alleged fake encounter near Gandhinagar. Police had then claimed Sohrabuddin had links with the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The other fake encounter took place in December 2006 when Prajapati, an eyewitness, was killed by the police at Chapri village in the Banaskantha district of Gujarat.

One of the allegations against Shah was that given the phone calls made by him to the accused police officers, the minister had a role in the conspiracy. However, Shah's counsel argued that the CBI had not denied that as home minister Shah would call police officers in the field.

Sohrabuddin's family stated they would move the high court against the CBI court verdict. A CBI spokesperson said it would study the order before deciding to file an appeal in a higher court.

BJP National Secretary Shrikant Sharma demanded Congress President Sonia Gandhi “apologise for the heinous crime of the Congress-led UPA government falsely implicating Shah”.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi questioned the CBI counsel’s role, and why the counsel argued "only for 15 minutes" whereas defence lawyers argued in favour of Shah for three days, and why the agency also did not hire any special public prosecutor for the case. He also questioned why the the special CBI judge, special public prosecutor and investigating officers of the agency were “changed”. Another Congress spokesperson, Ajoy Kumar, said the BJP criticised the UPA for having CBI as its “caged parrot”, but the "CBI is now chained, caged and totally immobilised.”

Senior AAP leader Yogendra Yadav demanded that the CBI should challenge the order in the high court. Last week, the AAP accused the CBI of taking a 'U turn' and "weakening" the Sohrabuddin case.