Former Gujarat Minister Amit Shah arrested by CBI in Sohrabuddin case

File photo of Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah.

Former Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today in connection with the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case after he turned up at the agency's office in response to summons issued by it earlier this week.

Before driving down to the CBI office in Gandhinagar, the state capital, Mr Shah, who had eluded the agency's investigators for the past few days, made a dramatic appearance before the media and maintained that he was innocent.

He said he would present himself before the CBI for questioning immmediately afterwards.

Mr Shah, 46, a close aide of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, resigned from his post yesterday, a day after the CBI named him as one of the accused in the case that also involves the killing of Sohrabuddin's wife, Kausar Bi.

As soon as he arrived at the CBI office, Mr Shah was placed under arrest and taken to the residence of CBI Judge A Y Dave, who will hear the agency's application for remand.

At the media interaction, Mr Shah said he had not so far seen the chargesheet filed against him by the CBI but insisted, on the basis of what he had learnt from the media, that the charges against him were fabricated and politically motivated.

He said the false charges were drawn up against him at the behest of the Congress-led Government at the Centre.

Mr Shah said he was confident that, when the chargesheet came up in court, he would be proved innocent.

According to him, the Congress had turned the so-called fake encounter case involving Sohrabuddin into a "political encounter" with the BJP and its Government in Gujarat.

He said he had full faith in the country's judiciary and in the thousands of supporters of the BJP.

He regretted that he had been portrayed by the CBI as a criminal, murderer and extortionist. He said he would fight the case legally

Hundreds of supporters of the BJP mobbed Mr Shah as he came out of the party headquarters here after the media interaction.

Mr Shah's assertions about his innocence came a day after Mr Modi had stoutly defended his colleague and accused the CBI of fabricating charges against him as aprt of the political agenda of the Congress.

Mr Shah did not appear before the agency on Thursday in response to a summons after which the agency issued a second summons asking him to appear before it by 1 pm on Friday. He did not appear before the agency on Friday, too, though he did send his legal team, requesting it for a list of the questions it intended to ask him so that he could prepare answers after consulting records.

The CBI turned down that request and went ahead and filed a chargesheet without examining him. Mr Shah, meanwhile, applied for anticipatory bail, but the court rejected his plea, raising the possibilities that he would be arrested soon. On Saturday morning, he sent in his resignation to Mr Modi's residence.

The CBI said it had filed the chargesheet against 15 accused persons in the Court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Ahmedabad, under sections 120-B (conspiracy), read with sections 342 (wrongful confinement), 364 (kidnapping and abducting to murder), 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine a person), 368 (wrongfully concealing or keeping in confinement kidnapped or abducted person), 384 (extortion), 302 (murder) and 201 (cuasing disappearance of valuable evidence of offence or giving false information to screen offenders) in the fake killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and the brutal murder of his wife, Kausar bi.

Apart from Mr Shah, these accused persons include Deputy Inspector General of Police D G Vanzara, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad Crime Branch Abhay Chudasama, two superintendents of police, three police inspectors, three sub-inspectors, and the Chairman and a Director of the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank.

The CBI said in a statement that it had not found adequate evidence against three accused who were earlier sent for trial. They are: Ajay Parmar, Police Constable, Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), Ahmedabad; Sant Ram Sharma, Police Constable, ATS, Ahmedabad and B.A.Rathore, Inspector, ATS, Ahmedabad. The CBI, therefore, did not include them in its charge sheet.

"The Minister of State for Home (Government of Gujarat) was issued summons for his appearance before the CBI on 22.07.2010 and 23.07.2010. He did not appear and hence charge sheet was filed without his examination," it said.

The CBI requested the court to keep investigation open for further investigation under section 173 (8) of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C) for probing further into the larger conspiracy.

The agency said it had filed the chargesheet within the stipulated 90 days after effecting the arrest of Chudasama.

The CBI is investigating the case at the behest of the Supreme Court, which asked it in January this year to take over the case and submit a report within six months, that is by the end of July.

The apex court had directed the agency to look into all aspects of the killing of Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi and also to look into the larger conspiracy.

The CBI had registered a case on February 1 this year. Earlier, the CID Crime of Gujarat had filed a chargesheet against 13 accused persons. One more person was arraigned as accused on the application of a Deputy Superintendent of Police and Deputy Inspector General of Police of Gujarat.

During the course of investigation, the CBI had examined 278 witnesses, collected 191 documents and 70 material objects. The investigation was spread over five states --Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Apart from Vanzara and Chudasama, two other Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, Rajkumar Pandian of Gujarat and Dinesh M N of Rajasthan, have been arrested by the police in the case, along with ten other policemen.

Sohrabuddin was shot dead on November 26, 2005 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The Gujarat police said that Sohrabuddin was a terrorist and had plotted to kill Mr Modi and that he was killed in an encounter. But various investigations since then have indicated that it was a case of a fake encounter.

According to various accounts, Sohrabuddin and his wife, Kausar Bi, were picked up from a bus and taken to a farmhouse. Some days later, Sohrabuddin was shot dead. His wife was also killed later and reports have said that her body was burnt and disposed of by members of the state Anti-Terrorist Squad.

The CBI has collected evidence suggesting that Mr Shah was in constant touch over the telephone with senior policemen involved in the case during the period before and after the fake encounter and sources said he would be questioned closely on this aspect.

Mr Shah had not attended cabinet meetings in recent days and had also been absent from his office amidst growing speculation about the possibility of his arrest by the CBI.

NNN