FIR in Prajapathi case mala fide, Amit Shah tells court

‘Congress using CBI to get me arrested during Assembly polls’

Amit Shah

Alleging that the Congress is using the CBI to have him arrested during the Gujarat Assembly polls, the former Home Minister of the State, Amit Shah, has moved the Supreme Court for a direction to quash the FIR filed by the agency in the Tulsiram Prajapathi case.

In his writ petition, Mr. Shah said the CBI, with mala fide and solely for victimising him, misconstrued the judgment and order passed by the court on April 8, 2011 while entrusting to it the investigation of the death of Prajapathi, allegedly in a fake encounter in December 2006. He said the CBI had filed a charge sheet with an ulterior motive of causing his arrest/sending him to judicial custody for the second time for the very same offence, though he had already been arrested, and released on regular bail by the Gujarat High Court holding that there was no prima facie case against him.

Mr. Shah said he had a fundamental right under Article 20 of the Constitution of not being prosecuted and arrested twice for the same offence.

The CBI, which investigated the May 2005 abduction and killing of extortionist Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi, had specifically stated in the Supreme Court that Prajapathi was a key witness to the murder of Sohrabuddin, that he was the ‘third person’ who had accompanied the couple — travelling by bus from Hyderabad — and that the killing of Prajapathi was part of the same conspiracy. He was a trusted lieutenant of Sohrabuddin.

Mr. Shah said the CBI ought to have filed a supplementary charge sheet in the Sohrabuddin case but it committed a wilful and politically motivated fraud on this court and registered a fresh offence ostensibly based upon the judgment entrusting it with the Prajapathi case investigation.

Mr. Shah, who was arrested in the Sohrabuddin case, said he was interrogated also on the killing of Prajapathi. The July 23, 2010 charge sheet in the Sohrabuddin case substantiated this fact. As per the CBI’s investigation, the killings of two persons as mentioned in the first FIR and the subsequent murder of Prajapathi were part of the same conspiracy and the same chain of events under Section-220 of the Cr.PC.

Contending that the second charge sheet, dated April 29, 2001, was a mala fide exercise of power, Mr. Shah sought a direction to quash it, declaring the same contrary to the direction issued in the April 8, 2011 judgment.