india

Updated: Jan 02, 2019 01:30 IST

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday alleged the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance used the Central Bureau of Investigation to target Amit Shah, the then home minister of Gujarat, in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case.

Union minister Smriti Irani said at a press conference that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister, and Shah were seen as main political adversaries of the Congress which went all out to destroy them.

“The case against Amit Shah (in Sohrabuddin Shaikh case) was the finest example of the length to which the Congress can go to destroy its political adversaries,” Irani said at the press conference at BJP headquarters.

A special CBI court on December 21 acquitted all 22 accused in the alleged encounter killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kausar Bi and his aide Tulsi Prajapati in 2005-06. Amit Shah, who was the minister of state for home in Gujarat at that time, was also arrested briefly in 2010 in the case before being discharged in December 2014.

Irani alleged that evidence was “manufactured” in an attempt to “destroy” Shah, now president of the BJP, politically.

Irani also accused Congress chief Rahul Gandhi of supporting a terrorist, a reference to his tweet on the verdict in Sohrabuddin Sheikh case saying that “nobody killed” him and he “just died”.

“No one killed.. Haren Pandya. Tulsiram Prajapati... Sohrabuddin Shiekh. They just died,” Gandhi said in a tweet just after the court judgment acquitting the accused.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley retorted to Rahul’s tweet on Monday, and said the court noted in its judgment acquitting 22 people, that the CBI hadn’t investigated the case professionally

In a Facebook post titled “Who killed the Sohrabuddin Investigation?”, Jaitley’s delivered a sharp rebuttal, saying those who have recently shown a belated concern for institutional independence “should seriously introspect as to what they did to the CBI when they were in power.”

The minister recalled a 15-page letter that he wrote in September 2013 to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, detailing politicisation of the investigation in the Sohrabuddin, Tulsi Prajapati, Ishrat Jahan, Rajinder Rathore and the Haren Pandya cases.

“Every word of what I have said in the letter, over the next five years, have proven to be true. This is an irrefutable evidence of what the Congress did to our investigative agencies,” he said.

Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill said Irani is frustrated after losing to his party in an electoral battle not once but twice. “For the past 15 years, she is trying to defeat Congress candidates in various constituencies but has been unsuccessful. So, her grudges are born out of sheer frustration,” he said.

“This is same Smriti Irani who protested and sat on a hunger strike against Modi-Shah “Jodi” in Gujarat...,” he said and added that any BJP leader accusing the Congress of misusing the CBI is like “pot calling the kettle black” especially after they are using CBI/ED like the BJP’s “muscle men” to intimidate the opposition.