Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday recalled how he had suffered under the ‘real misuse’ of agencies when he was booked and arrested in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh ‘fake encounter case.’ He talked about he was pressured to ‘frame’ then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi several times during his interrogation in the case. Read excerpts from the interview here
“All these people were there when this was happening. Chidambaram, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, and Rahul Gandhi were all present then… In my entire interrogation, I was told ‘Modi ka naam de do, de do [give us Modi’s name]. But why should I frame him? Today, the same Congress is crying over its fate. They must reflect on their behavior,” Shah said. Live Updates from the Summit
His comments come in the backdrop of Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in a defamation case, and his subsequent disqualification from the Lok Sabha as per rules, after which the Congress has been alleging misuse of central agencies by the ruling BJP, and ‘vendetta politics.’ With Parliament functioning in a logjam, prominent Congress leaders, including party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, senior leader Sonia Gandhi and others have also been wearing black as a show of protest against the action. Various Congress factions have also staged agitations across states in support of Rahul, and against the ‘alleged subversion of democracy’.
However, Amit Shah said he had faced the actual misuse of central agencies during the Congress regime. As per reports citing sources, the CBI had wanted to investigate Modi in the case as well, as he was holding the Home portfolio when the incident had taken place.
But even after his arrest, Shah had maintained that there was “no need to drag Chief Minister Narendra Modi into this issue.”
Political Intervention
The BJP has maintained that the case was politically driven, which is why the agencies were interested in dragging Modi in it too. After Shah’s arrest, the BJP accused the central government of misusing the CBI, and of the agency working in a partisan manner by targeting Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, where it had governments at the time , and ignoring the Andhra Pradesh angle in the Sohrabuddin case as the Congress is in power in that state during the arrest.
“Sohrabuddin Sheikh was a terrorist from whose premises in Indore nearly 300 AK-47s were recovered. He used to operate an inter-state gang. Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are under CBI radar but the Andhra Pradesh angle (in the fake encounter case) is not being investigated at all as Congress is in power there,” then BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad had said.
Years later, while campaigning in Gujarat in 2019, PM Modi had recalled the incident, of UPA government arresting BJP president Amit Shah and some police officers in Gujarat to topple the state government then headed by him.
“Our police officers, and even Amit Shah, were thrown behind bars. They (UPA) employed all means to break the Gujarat government,” Modi had said.
During the interview, Shah recalled, “The Congress did not file a corruption case against us. An encounter took place, and I was the home minister of that state, and the CBI registered a case against me and they arrested me. The CBI recorded me, which should still be there if the Congress had not removed it. In 90% of CBI’s questions, the refrain was ‘why are you getting tense? Just take Modi’s name, and we will free you.’ We did not wear black clothes, we did not protest.”
“An SIT was formed against the CM (Narendra Modi). There was no corruption case. There was a fake riot case filed, which the Supreme Court had dismissed. We did not create a hue and cry. We never wore black clothes and blocked the workings of Parliament. And I will tell you the result, they arrested me, I got bail within 90 days by the High Court, which said there are no evidence against me. I applied for acquittal in a Mumbai court, the case was taken out of Gujarat, where it said the CBI filed the case on the grounds of political vendetta that’s why we quash all charges against Amit Shah. We didn’t create a scene.”
The Sohrabuddin Case
The Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case arose after the death of Sohrabuddin Anwarhussain Sheikh on November 26, 2005, in Gujarat. A special CBI court acquitted all 22 accused (including Amit Shah) in the alleged encounter murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife.
Sheikh, in addition to being involved in the criminal extortion ring in Gujarat, was also involved in guns smuggling in Madhya Pradesh and had murder charges lodged against him in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Sheikh was also linked to the outlawed global terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence, according to police. Read the timeline of the case here
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