New Delhi:
BJP's new general secretary Amit Shah will learn today whether he will have to stand trial separately in two alleged fake encounter cases that he says are connected with each other. If the Supreme Court rules today that he will be tried separately, Mr Shah could be arrested again.
The key
Narendra Modi aide is accused of conspiracy in the murders of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati, both allegedly killed in fake encounters by the state police.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a separate chargesheet for Prajapati's murder last year and Amit Shah moved the Supreme Court alleging a "malafide design" by the investigating agency to take him into custody again.
Mr Shah is out on bail in the Sohrabuddin case and has argued that the CBI should have filed only an additional chargesheet on the Prajapati murder, since it is "on record that both killings are inter-connected" and an "integral part of the conspiracy hatched as a part of the same transaction."
The CBI says these are different cases. It has accused Gujarat's Anti-Terrorism Squad of abducting and shooting dead small-time criminal Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi in November 2005. The Gujarat police had claimed then that Sheikh had links to terror organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba and planned to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Tulsiram Prajapati, Sohrabuddin's associate, was a key witness to the murder and was allegedly killed by the police in December 2006, also while in custody. Mr Shah was Gujarat's minister of state for Home then and the CBI alleges that he hatched the conspiracy to kill Sohrabuddin and then Prajapati.
Mr Shah had to resign and was arrested in July 2010 in the Sohrabuddin case. He spent over three months in jail before getting bail. But he was ordered not to return to Gujarat to ensure he did not influence the case.
The Supreme Court allowed him to return to Gujarat only in 2012 and Mr Shah promptly contested Assembly elections, winning handsomely from Naranpura last December. Last week, he was made BJP general secretary.