Gandhinagar- After eluding the CBI for four days, former Gujarat minister Amit Shah, a close aide of Narendra Modi, on Sunday surrendered before the probe agency which arrested him in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case shortly after he made a dramatic appearance at a BJP media briefing.
46-year-old Shah, who resigned from the Modi government yesterday following a charge sheet being filed against him, turned up at the BJP office in Ahmedabad, where he denied all the charges against him. He then drove to the office of the CBI which arrested him and produced him before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate A Y Dave here.
Surprisingly, the CBI did not press for custody of Shah, who has been charged with murder, extortion, kidnapping and five other sections under IPC for the killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi in 2005. He was remanded by the magistrate in judicial custody for 13 days till August 7.
"I have full faith in the judiciary and I am sure the allegations against me will be cleared by the courts," Shah said after he appeared during a press conference called by state BJP president R C Faldu at the BJP headquarters in Ahmedabad, ending the suspense of his whereabouts since Thursday when he was first summoned by the CBI. Shah claimed that he was innocent and said that charges against him were "fabricated, politically motivated and were on the instruction of Congress government" and demanded that his entire questioning by the CBI should be video-graphed.
Later Shah went to the CBI office in Gandhinagar. Waving to the mediapersons after alighting from his car, he found that officers of the probe agency were waiting for him.
"The CBI officials told Shah that they will take him straight to the court to which he agreed," BJP leader Vijay Rupani, who accompanied Shah, said.
The BJP slammed Shah's arrest accusing the central government of misusing the CBI, an allegation dismissed by the Congress which said that the probe agency would not risk the wrath of the Supreme Court by levelling false charges.
"Do you think CBI is full of a bunch of fools who will risk their entire career by making false allegations, non-existing allegations which are going to be examined by the Supreme Court," Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.
On Shah's claims that he was being arrested under false allegations by the CBI, he accused the BJP leader of trying to "fool the country" by making such remarks.
"Charge sheet is not made overnight. Charge sheet is a collection of evidence.... Here over five-six months of investigation the CBI has got enough evidence against Amit Shah," Singhvi said. The party said Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi should also be prepared to face some "uncomfortable" questions in the probe. Backing Shah, the BJP accused the CBI of working in a partisan manner by targeting Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, where it has governments, and ignoring the Andhra Pradesh angle in the Sohrabuddin case as the Congress is in power in that state.
"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," BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
The CBI, which took over the investigation of fake encounter case in January this year on the orders of Supreme Court, had sent two summons to Shah on Thursday, but he did not appear before the agency and went underground.
The CBI on Friday filed a chargesheet in the special court charging him with section 302 (murder), 120 B (conspiracy), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement, 364, 365 and 368 (all related to kidnapping), 384 (extortion) and 201 (disappearance of evidence) of IPC, according to a CBI spokesman said in Delhi.
Before his arrest, Shah said,"The incident happened five years back. But the CBI acted in such haste that they did not even give me enough time to reply. I will respond to all the charges and will expose the people who are behind bringing of these allegations.
"This is a ploy of the Congress government to carry out our political encounter as the party has not come to power in Gujarat for the last 20 years. I have full faith in the judiciary, people of Gujarat and BJP workers. I will fight the legal battle in the court of law and the party will fight the political battle at political level," the BJP leader said.
Shah said, "Congress leaders are saying that Sohrabuddin was a petty criminal. It was Sohrabuddin from whose house more than 40 AK-47, 100 hand grenades and ammunition worth Rs 1 lakh were recovered. He was wanted by the police of five states and he had 40 cases against him.
"When the army of Pakistan will come then only they might think that they are criminals. Nation is not safe in the hands of Congress," Shah said
Shah, who is elected from Sarkhej constituency and had been minister of state for home in the Modi government since 2002, also said that the Chief Minister should not be dragged into the issue. "There is no need to drag Chief Minister Narendra Modi into this issue," he said reply to a reporter's query.
Modi, who was in New Delhi yesterday to attend a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC), had said that Shah was "completely innocent" and that the charges against him were "politically motivated".
Teams of CBI had been searching for Shah and other accused at various locations after the filing of the charge sheet against them. Shah's anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Special CBI Court on Friday.
The charge sheet has named Shah as a key accused along with IPS officers D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian, M N Dinesh and Abhay Chudasama. In all, 15 accused have been named.
According to the charge sheet, it was Shah who had entrusted the task of eliminating Sheikh, an alleged gangster, to Vanzara, Pandia and Chudasama. Sheikh was killed in an encounter near here on November 26, 2005.
Earlier, state BJP president R C Faldu alleged that Shah, who was "totally innocent", had been "falsely implicated" in the case for which CBI has been "misused".
"We know that Congress governments have had the habit of disturbing non-Congress governments in states. We feel that the Congress is afraid of the support JD(U), BJP and its allies have in poll-bound Bihar," he said.
In a reply to a question on where he was during the last couple of days, Shah shot back, "I was at the residence of one of the friends like you journalists.
"As far as the question of issuing summons is concerned, it was done as if I am an absconder and a known criminal. I was not given time as on July 22, the first summons was issued at 11 AM asking me to appear before them (CBI) at 1 PM," Shah said.
"On the same day another summons was issued asking me to come before 1 PM of July 22 giving me no time to have legal consultations about the five-year-old case," Shah said.
He termed the CBI's move to summon him as a drama saying the agency had already prepared 30,000 page charge sheet in the case.
"How can they file the charge sheet showing me as an accused in just couple of hours after expiry of deadline for my appearance before them?" he asked. Shah rose from being a district level worker to one of the most powerful men in BJP due to his proximity to Modi.
A science graduate, Shah was first entrusted with the responsibility of BJP's Yuva Morcha by Modi some 20 years ago.
Shah replaced Haren Pandya as minister of state for home in 2002.
Meanwhile, the CBI is likely to take the custody of junior Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah next week after examining two senior police officials including Geetha Johri, who was part of the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team probing the 2002 communal riots.
Sources in the investigating agency said that Shah, who was arrested in Gandhinagar today after he surrendered, needs to be confronted with some people who were being examined by the CBI in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
They said the agency would be exmaining 53-year-old Johri, a 1982 batch IPS officer, and record her statement besides that of former Ahmedabad Police Commissioner O P Mathur, who retired last year on March 31, 2009. Some more police officials and individuals would also be examined by the CBI.
The sources said that after examining them and some others, the CBI would take the custody Shah, who has been sent to Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad till August seven, for a thorough interrogation.
They said that he would also be confronted with some of the police officials already in custody after taking the permission from courts.
Shah has been charged under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 120 B(conspiracy), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 364, 365 and 368 (all related to kidnapping), 384 (extortion) and 201 (disappearance of evidence).
Shah claimed that he was innocent and said that charges against him were "fabricated, politically motivated and were on the instruction of Congress government" and demanded that his entire questioning by the CBI be video-graphed. PTI
