By IANS
New Delhi: Former Gujarat minister of state for home Amit Shah Tuesday said the Central Bureau of Investigation’s case linking him to the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh shootout was based on fake evidence, and urged the Supreme Court to take note of it.
The apex court bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice R.M. Lodha was told this by Shah’s senior counsel Ram Jethmalani, who sought to bring on record the transcript of a news channel’s sting operation related to the case.
The sting operation showed that Sohrabuddin’s brother Nayimuddin allegedly said that he did not name Amit Shah in his statement before the investigating agency.
“In Amit Shah’s matter, no one has sought my help,” Nayimuddin reportedly said in the sting operation by the news channel.
As Jethmalani pressed for taking the transcript and the accompanying affidavit on record, the court said, “There is already so much of material on record. Why are you burdening it further with another document?”
While saying that for the time being it would reserve its order on the plea to take the document on record, the court wondered as to what extent it could rely on a sting operation’s transcript.
Justice Lodha said: “This matter is pending for a long time. We are concerned with the bail matter. This man (Amit shah) is not allowed to enter the state. There is no end to evidence. Evidence will keep on cropping (up).”
Jethmalani said that what had surfaced in the sting operation, if it was true, then the entire charge sheet against the former Gujarat minister would have to go.
The court was hearing of an appeal by the investigating agency challenging the grant of bail to the former minister by the Gujarat High court and seeking transfer of his trial outside the state.
On Oct 29, 2010, the Gujarat High Court granted him bail but the very next day the CBI moved the apex court seeking the cancellation of bail.
The apex court while keeping the CBI plea pending directed Shah to stay away from Gujarat.
The CBI in its appeal said that Shah and police officer Abhay Chudasama “while in judicial custody conspired with some Gujarat police officers to destroy crucial evidence and to shield the accused from law”.
The court asked CBI’s senior counsel K.T.S. Tulsi to withdraw himself from the case as he appeared for the Gujarat government in the initial stages.
While declining the plea of former solicitor general Gopal Subramanium to withdraw from the case as amicus curiae, the court asked him to continue to assist it.
The case would be heard next Aug 17.