The allegations against UPA government by former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah in the Supreme Court that he was “framed” in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case to “destabilise” the Modi government by using the CBI for this purpose seems to have been taken very seriously by the Centre as it pressed the services of three of its top law officers to take note of the case.
Unlike previous hearings, three additional solicitor-generals set throughout the day to take note of every bit of arguments by Amit Shah’s counsel Ram Jethmalani, who made the allegations against UPA government and CBI last week that Amit Shah was “framed in a false case to destabilise the Modi government”.
Earlier till last week only ASG Vivek Tankha was appearing for CBI during the lengthy arguments by Jethmalani but on Tuesday when the case resumed two more ASGs — Haren Raval and Indira Jaisingh — joined him.
All of them were seen taking notes of every new point of argument by Jethmalani, who continued his attack on the UPA government and CBI accusing them of turning the case “political” by “framing” Shah.
He told a bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai that the Gujarat police SIT under Geeta Johri had already probed the case as “fake encounter” but the CBI did not add any new thing, except adding the name of Shah and one or two other “insignificant” persons.
He again focused his arguments on CBI “ignoring” to probe the role of Hyderabad-based Kalimuddin and seven Andhra Pradesh cops, which was crucial link to show how “Kalimuddin was used by the Intelligence Bureau” to bring Sohrabuddin out from the hiding in Madhya Pradesh to invite him to Hyderabad.
He tried to prove from the records that while Sohrabuddin was in Hyderabad he held a threat to marble traders in Rajasthan along with Kalimuddin for Rs 25 crore extortion money and asked his associate Tulsi Ram Prajapati to collect the money but he was arrested by Rajasthan police.
While CBI had stated that Prajapati was the third person held by Gujarat Police at Sangli in Maharashtra in November 2005 with Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi before all the three were killed but CBI records showed otherwise as Prajapati in fact was in Bhilwara jail at that time.