Ahmedabad:
The CBI has indicted both the Gujarat Police and Amit Shah, a close aide of Narendra Modi, in a report submitted today to the Supreme Court on the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case.
The Gujarat police worked closely with its former boss Amit Shah to help him get bail, says the CBI in its report. Shah was Minister of State for Home in Gujarat till July this year, when he was arrested and accused - along with 14 senior police officers - for killing Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife, Kauser Bi, in November 2005.
(Read: Who is Amit Shah?)Shah was kept at Sabarmati Jail till October when he was granted bail.
(Read: Ex- Gujarat Minister Amit Shah gets bail) During this time, the police, according to the CBI, bent the rules, allowing family members and party workers to visit Shah in jail without any official records of those visits. The CBI also claims that on behalf of Shah, the police kidnapped a key witness in September.
For a fair trial, the CBI says, Shah's case must be transferred to Mumbai.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide on the CBI pleas on December 14.
In November 2005, Sohrabuddin was shot dead on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. His wife, Kauser Bi, was killed a few days later. At the time, Gujarat's Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) said that Sohrabuddin was a terrorist who planned to assassinate Modi. In 2007, the Gujarat state government admitted in court that Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi had been wrongly killed. Some of the state's senior-most policemen are in jail, charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, and kidnapping.
(Read: Who was Sohrabuddin Sheikh?) Phone records allegedly show that those same policemen were in close and constant touch with Shah once they picked up Sohrabuddin and his wife, Kauser Bi, from a bus headed from Hyderabad to Sangli. The policemen who allegedly framed and shot Sohrabuddin include DG Vanzara, who was the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of the Gujarat police, and Abhay Chudasama, the head of Ahmedabad's crime branch.
The Supreme Court asked the CBI to take over the Sohrabuddin case in January this year. Till then, the investigation was being handled by the Gujarat Police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The court found the CID's work unsatisfactory.
The CBI believes that a group of businessmen who deal in marble in Rajasthan contacted politicians in their state to complain that Sohrabuddin was blackmailing them. They, in turn, allegedly asked Shah to help out. Shah then commissioned the police to help out, according to the CBI.
Azam Khan was one of the CBI's main witnesses against Shah. Khan knew Sohrabuddin well and like him, was accused of extortion and other crimes. Khan originally testified that during a stint in jail, he heard two policemen arrested for Sohrabuddin's murder describing the encounter as one that had political masters. But in September, he said he had been pressured by the CBI into his testimony. Weeks later, he said in court that he had been abducted by the Gujarat police and kept at a hotel till he agreed to retract his statement.