The Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday concluded its three-day grilling of Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, during which the former Gujarat minister reportedly did not give satisfactory replies to questions put to him despite an assurance by his lawyer that he would cooperate in the probe.
Sources in the CBI said a four-member team of the investigating agency quizzed Shah for the third consecutive day for nearly four hours inside the Sabarmati central jail, where he has been lodged since his arrest on July 25.
They said like the earlier two days, the BJP leader did not cooperate in the investigation into the 2005 episode. Shah has not been giving proper replies to questions put to him despite the assurance given by his lawyer in court that he would cooperate in the probe, they said.
The special CBI court had earlier allowed questioning of the former minister of state for home from July 28 to 30. The nearly five-year-old case also involves killing of Sheikh's wife Kausar Bi allegedly by the Gujarat police.
Shah has been booked by the CBI for murder, kidnapping, destruction of evidence and criminal conspiracy, among other charges. The chargesheet in the case was filed on July 23. According to the chargesheet, police officials of the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad and the Rajasthan Special Task Force had stage managed the encounter of Sheikh, a suspected gangster, near Ahmedabad.
Shah had entrusted the job of eliminating Sheikh to three senior IPS officers -- D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiyan and Abhay Chudasama, the CBI document said.
The CBI further alleged that Shah was in constant touch over telephone with Vanzara when Sheikh and his wife were in the custody of the state police. Vanzara was instructed allegedly by Shah to eliminate Kausar Bi, a key witness to her husband's abduction.
After the case was transferred to the CBI in January, Shah directed Ajay Patel and Yashpal Chudasama, his close confidants, to "convince, coerce, threaten, influence the witnesses on his behalf to conceal the truth from CBI about the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin," the chargesheet said. PTI
