New Delhi:
A day after Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's key aide Amit Shah was arrested in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, the BJP has questioned why the CBI left out the YSR government from the inquiry.
"The Sohrabuddin encounter probe by CBI was to target BJP and to keep Congress out. This is evident from the fact that though then Andhra Pradesh government of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was equally involved in the arrest and encounter death of Sohrabuddin, CBI completely left out the government from the radar.
"This is despite the fact that the Supreme Court had specifically observed that the identity of the seven police personnel of Andhra Pradesh who had accompanied Sohrabuddin was not known in the probe conducted by the Gujarat government and that was one of the reasons for the Supreme Court handing over the matter to CBI," Gadkari claimed.
The CBI has not bothered to interrogate the Andhra Pradesh government or its police officials at all, he said. "What other proof is needed to show that the CBI did only what the Congress would have liked it to do?" (
Read: Why no CBI custody for Amit Shah, asks BJP)
Gadkari also accused the Congress of using the Sohrabuddin encounter case to promote its vote bank politics ahead of Bihar assembly polls. He added that his party was ready to legally and politically fight the case filed against former Gujarat minister Amit Shah. (
Watch: Shah quit out of respect for law, says BJP)
"BJP will face the legal challenge presented by the fabricated prosecution in court of law. I declare that the BJP also accepts the political challenge thrown by the Congress and will take the issue to the people of India," Gadkari told reporters at the state BJP office here.
"We are sure that the Congress game will fail and its nefarious designs will be exposed," Gadkari said.He termed CBI as Congress Bureau of Investigation and alleged it is discriminated against Gujarat government.
The 'persecution' of Shah in the Sohrabuddin case was a political strategy of Congress to divert attention from UPA government's failures on all fronts, Gadkari said.
"The government has failed to tackle inflation, infiltration in Kashmir, the Naxal menace and even the foreign minister's Pakistan visit has failed.
"The Congress strategy, being implemented through CBI is clearly to vitiate the atmosphere against Shah," he said.
Under the UPA rule, terrorists are treated with biryani and those patriotic police officials and their political bosses who deal with terrorists are humiliated like hardened criminals, he claimed.
By fabricating false and frivolous charges through CBI, and by arresting Shah, the UPA government has declared a political war on the best performing state government in the country led by Narendra Modi, he said. (With PTI inputs)