The former Union Law Minister and senior advocate, Ram Jethmalani, on Wednesday alleged in the Supreme Court that the Centre was using the CBI to falsely implicate the former Gujarat Home Minister, Amit Shah, in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case.
Making this submission before a Bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan hearing arguments on petition for transfer of the Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case for re-investigation by the CBI, Mr. Jethmalani said: “The Centre had hatched a conspiracy with CBI to target Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his government and the first among them was Amit Shah.”
“No evidence”
Criticising the CBI for foisting a case on Amit Shah “without a piece of evidence” to support its case, he said: “The Central government was targeting Mr. Modi due to political reasons and Amit Shah was only a medium through which it could achieve it. There is evidence to prove that there is a conspiracy to target a democratically elected government that is a thorn to it. The idea is to first target Amit Shah and then fix Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his government.”
He said the Gujarat government had already filed a charge sheet in this case and trial was proceeding in the right direction. He said Prajapati had no connection whatsoever in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter and he was not a witness as was being projected by the CBI. He said Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi had stayed at Kalimuddin's house in Hyderabad and during their return to a village in Maharashtra, Sohrabuddin was killed in an encounter. If Prajapati was a key witness to this encounter just as Kausar Bi, he would have been eliminated along with Kausar Bi and not after 13 months.
The third person who was said to have accompanied Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi was this Kalimuddin and not Prajapati as was being projected by the CBI.
He will continue his arguments on Thursday.
Earlier, counsel Huzefi Ahamadi, appearing for the petitioner, Narmada Bai, mother of Prajapati, pleaded for a CBI probe and for shifting the case outside Gujarat as the atmosphere in the State was not conducive for a fair trial.
Senior counsel K.T.S. Tulsi, appearing for the CBI, maintained that the fake encounter of Prajapati was linked to the Sohrabuddin fake encounter and he was eliminated as he was the key witness to the incident. During the investigation, the CBI had found the involvement several Gujarat government and police officers and since the facts and chain of events were one and the same, the Prajapati case should also be transferred to the CBI for further probe.
While Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi were killed in a fake encounter by the Gujarat police in November 2005, Prajapati, it was alleged, was shot dead by the police in a similar encounter on December 27, 2006.
