11 June,2016 07:19 AM IST | | Vinay Dalvi
A petition was filed in the High Court claiming that BJP President Amit Shah influenced court proceedings to get a clean chit in the case
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah is again being linked with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, from which he was discharged in December 2014. A writ petition was filed in the Bombay High Court yesterday claiming that Shah influenced court proceedings to get a clean chit in the case.
Amit Shah was acquitted of triple murder charges in December 2014 (top right) Sohrabuddin Sheikh
The petitioner, Rajesh Kamble, owner of Yash Foundation, in his petition, also claimed that Shah threatened Sohrabuddin's brother Rubabuddin to withdraw the appeal he had filed in HC against Shah's discharge by a lower court in November 2015. Kamble's petition will come for hearing next week.
The case
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had named Shah as the prime accused in their chargesheet in 2012 in the fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi. CBI had alleged that Shah, the then Gujarat home minister, had hired Sheikh to extort money for him and after they had a fallout, he got him killed in November 2005 and made it look like an encounter.
CBI had also charged Shah for killing Sohrabuddin's friend and the case's sole witness Prajapati Tulsiram in December 2006. CBI had also arrested him in July 2010 but he managed to get bail from Gujarat High Court in October.
Later, the SC transferred the case to a sessions court in Mumbai that discharged Shah from all the charges in December 2014. The sessions court had said that the CBI framed Shah due to political reasons. Meanwhile, the Congress had claimed that BJP was using CBI for its benefits.
