New Delhi, July 23: Gujarat Minister Amit Shah has moved for anticipatory bail after the CBI on Friday rejected his request to give him more time to explain evidence allegedly linking him to the 2005 killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in a fake encounter.
Shah’s lawyer Mitish Amin, who went to the CBI office in Gandhinagar after the minister was summoned twice, said he had requested the agency to give his client more time and a questionnaire.
However, CBI turned down the requests. “They do not think that they need to give a questionnaire to us,” Amin told reporters after coming out of the CBI office.
TROUBLED: Shah at the convocation of Gujarat National Law University in Ahmadabad on March 28, 2010.
“We are willing to cooperate but the time given to Shah was less. The way he has got the summons and was asked to come for deposition, we feel that the time was too less,” Amin said.
The investigating agency questioned Shah’s private secretary and has now dispatched teams to locate the Minister.
In New Delhi, BJP leader Arun Jaitley termed the summoning of Shah as “political vendetta” and alleged that CBI has become the “extended arm” of the Congress. “The timing of this is chosen for the political convenience of the Congress party,” he said.
The party decided not to attend the Prime Minister’s lunch for Opposition parties to protest against the CBI. “We met yesterday (Thursday) and decided not to go for the lunch which was conveyed this morning. This is to protest against the misuse of CBI in Gujarat,” said Swaraj.
Shah and Sohrabuddin
Shah, Minister of State for Home, allegedly personally directed the Sohrabuddin’s encounter, according to confessions made by police officials
Shah has been accused of calling up policemen involved in the killing of Sohrabuddin, who was labeled as a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative. The CBI collected the phone records of the minister to prove his role in the execution of the staged killing, it is alleged.
CNN-IBN learns the CBI agency has obtained call records which reveal that Shah was in constant touch with D G Vanzara, who was chief Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and is currently under arrest for the killings, soon after the encounter.
The ATS has been accused of killing Sohrabuddin in a staged shootout on November 26, 2005, in Ahmedabad. His wife Kauserbi has been missing ever since.
On January 12 this year, the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to register a case against the policemen from Gujarat and Rajasthan involved in Sheikh’s killing.
An Indian Police Service officer, Abhay Chudasama, was arrested soon after the CBI took over the case. Chudasama, the 15th policeman to be arrested in the case, was posted as deputy commissioner of police in Ahmedabad at the time of his arrest and was earlier a member of the state ATS.
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Sheikh’s brother Rubabuddin Sheikh stated that Sohrabuddin and Kauserbi were picked up by an ATS team and the Rajasthan Special Task Force on November 25, 2005, while the couple was going to Nashik from Hyderabad.
On November 28, 2005, the ATS and the STF claimed that Sohrabuddin was killed in a shootout near Ahmedabad.
The police claimed he had come to Ahmedabad with the intention of targeting senior political leaders and to engage in subversive activities.
——–IANS