A close associate of chief minister Narendra Modi and former state minister Amit Shah was felicitated by BJP chief Nitin Gadkari at the ongoing national council meet after Supreme Court rejected the CBI’s plea to cancel Mr Shah’s bail given in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. Though Mr Shah can now enter Gujarat, his trial will be moved outside the state to Mumbai. There are indications that the BJP will highlight the apex court’s decision in the poll-bound state to criticise the Congress-led UPA and how it misuses institutions to target the Opposition. The BJP welcomed the apex court’s decision.
“We welcome the Supr-eme Court order. We firmly believe that Amit Shah is innocent,” BJP national spokesman Prakash Javadekar said. He said the BJP was glad that Shah could now visit Gujarat and campaign in the upcoming state Assembly elections.
Mr Shah, who reached the venue of the meeting, said he had been maintaining from the very beginning that the case against him was politically motivated.
“We have cleared one more hurdle today and in the coming days it will be proved that this case was politically motivated and I am totally innocent,” Mr Shah, a former minister of state for home in the Gujarat government, said.
The court also permitted Mr Shah to enter and travel in Gujarat in view of the upcoming Asse-mbly elections. The CBI had approached the apex court against the bail granted to Mr Shah by the Gujarat high court in the case of fake encounter killing of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh and for shifting the trial of the case to a place outside Gujarat.
Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi were allegedly abducted by Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) from Hyderabad and killed in an encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005.