MUMBAI: Special CBI judge MB Gosavi in Mumbai discharged Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah as an accused in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh fake encounter case of 2005.

The judge dictated the order and pronounced it in an open court room packed with media and family and friends of Shaikh. Also present in the court was a co-accused Chudasama who is out on bail.

The order comes as a huge relief to Amit Shah who was Gujarat home minister at the time of the alleged encounter of Shaikh in 2005 and of Tulsiram Prajapati in 2006. Amit Shah has maintained that the case was false.

With this order amit Shah is a free man and doesn't have to face any trial. The case against him of criminal conspiracy to commit the fake encounters stands dropped.

But upset with the order, Shaikh's younger brother Rubabuddin Shaikh who was in the court and left with tears in his eyes said that he would certainly challenge the order in Bombay high court.

"For the first time with this order I feel let down. It's a huge disappointment," he told TOI soon after the operative part of the order was pronounced.

The judge who replaced the earlier special judge after his death in Nagpur heard defence counsel SV Raju at length.

Raju had argued that not only was there no direct evidence against Shah there was nothing to even show that he had made calls only to the police accused in the case.

It was his practice as a home minister to call up and be in touch with field police officers and the CBI has not denied this.

The CBI however has in a "sinister design to politically implicate him" produced call data records for only a limited period during the encounters, the court was told.

The judge will now dictate the reasons for the order of discharge.

The court recorded the CBI counsel's submissions as being that if there is strong suspicion court can frame charges but if the accused explains the accusations or if there are two views that it must discharge the accused.

The CBI arguments were not that strong said advocate Vijay Hitemath who appeared as did advocate Mihir Desai, on behalf of complainant Rubabuddin. He said that the order was disappointing and "very unusual in a fake encounter case".

"We will read the order once it is out with reasons and then appeal it in the high court."

Desai had argued that the court had enough evidence to frame charge and met the case go to trial and must not discharge Shah when enough suspicion is there at this stage to show his link with the encounters. The police officers accused in the case had called him collectively an unusually few hundred times in a year the agency had shown and this should be enough to frame charges against him.