The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a petition filed by social activist and former IAS officer Harsh Mander challenging the discharge of BJP president Amit Shah in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, saying that “a person cannot be interminably prosecuted.”
A Bench of Justices S.A. Bobde and Ashok Bhushan queried after Mr. Mander’s locus standi to challenge the discharge, saying he was not an aggrieved party in the case.
“You are not directly affected. What is your connection to this case?” the Bench asked senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Mr. Mander.
The court said it could not entertain a bid by an unconnected person to reopen the case.
“He [Mr. Shah] has already been discharged. A person cannot be interminably prosecuted,” the court observed orally.
Mr. Sibal alleged that change of power at the Centre in 2014 might have influenced the fate of the case with the CBI, the prosecuting agency, changing its stand. The senior advocate alleged that the victim’s brother, Rubabuddin Sheikh, had also withdrawn his appeal against the discharge around that time.
Mr. Sibal submitted that statements allegedly pointing to Mr. Shah’s involvement in the death of Sheikh, a gangster, were made under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Invoking Mr. Mander’s status as a former civil servant, Mr. Sibal tried to impress upon the court that his client was not a “busy-body” and a relook at the Mumbai court’s discharge of Mr. Shah in December 2014 was necessary.
The Bench, however, distinguished between the plea of a person “genuinely aggrieved” by the sessions court’s order of discharge and a person like Mr. Mander who was not even “remotely connected” to the criminal case and its outcome.
‘Nobody above law’
Mr. Sibal urged that by taking up the petition, the apex court should send a message across that nobody was above the law.
Noting that the law was equal to all, the court refused to be drawn into Mr. Sibal’s arguments indicating a political agenda behind the clean chit to Mr. Shah.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Mr. Shah, said a third person had no right to interfere in a criminal case.
No evidence found
The trial court had discharged Mr. Shah of the alleged Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounters for lack of evidence.
Sheikh and his wife, Kauser Bi, were allegedly abducted by Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorist Squad from Hyderabad and killed in a suspected fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005. Prajapati, an eyewitness, was allegedly eliminated by the Gujarat Police in December 2006.
In September 2012, the CBI had filed a charge sheet in a Gujarat court against 37 accused, including Mr. Shah, under Sections 302 (murder), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code.
