This is the third intervention by the higher judiciary in the affairs of the Gujarat government involving law and order in the past eight years. The first related to the Gujarat riots of February and March 2002, following which the apex court formed the special investigation team. The second concerned the fake encounter killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in November 2005 and the CBI was asked by the Supreme Court to investigate.

All three events took place when Narendra Modi was Gujarat chief minister.

A Division Bench consisting of Justice Jayant Patel and Justice Abhilasha Kumari gave the verdict on investigating the killing of Ishrat and three others, but rejected the demand for a CBI probe.

Shamina Kauser, Ishrat Jahan’s mother, along with some others, moved the petition in the Gujarat HC asking for a CBI probe into the alleged fake encounters by the Ahmedabad police in June 2004.

The then head of the detection of crime branch, DG Vanzara, who is also a prime accused in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and is currently lodged in jail, had claimed that all the four had links with thethe Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and were on a mission to kill Modi.

In September last year, local magistrate SP Tamang had said in his report that the Ishrat encounter was fake. Tamang had recommended action against 22 police officials. The policemen accused of the killing have challenged Tamang’s report in the Gujarat HC.

Human rights activists were enthused when the Supreme Court ordered handing over the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case to the CBI. “These are a series of incidents that are connected (with the aim of targeting innocent people by branding them as terrorists planning to kill Narendra Modi),” Mukul Sinha, a senior Gujarat High Court lawyer representing Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin, told HT.

Source: Hindustan Times

The NGO approached the Commission again after the Gujarat High Court direction on July 23 asking the riot panel to “look into the matter after taking into consideration the facts in their record”.

The state government’s lawyer has sought time to file a reply to JSM plea.

JSM has sought the summoning of Modi, Ashok Bhatt, the then health minister and now the

Assembly Speaker, Gordhan Zadafia, who was home minister at that time, and R J Savani, the then DCP of Ahmedabad, for their cross-examination in the post-Godhra riots cases.

The Commission has also reserved orders on another plea by JSM to summon three officials from the CMO. They are Omprakash Singh, Tanmay Mehta and Sanjay Bhavsar, whose cross-examination JSN has sought in an affidavit it had filed before the Commission a year ago.

In September last year, the Nanavati Commission had rejected JSM’s application seeking summoning of Modi and three others, saying they did not find any justification in cross-examining them at that point of time. Later, the JSM moved the High Court.

The Nanavati Commission had told the division bench headed by Chief Justice S J Mukhopadhaya during a hearing on April 1 that its decision of not summoning Modi was “not final”. In July, the court had, however, asked JSM to approach the Commission afresh.

Modi was questioned in connection with 2002 riots for over nine hours by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team(SIT) on March 27 this year following a complaint by one of the victims. The term of Nanavati Commission now stands extended for the 14th time till December 31 this year.

Source: Indian Express

The hearing on the petition is scheduled for Thursday.

Advocate Amrish Patel, who filed the petition, said GESMA was challenged as the notification was without any authority of law. The institute was not a solely government operated body, but only received grant-in-aid. As such, enforcement of GESMA was not applicable under the present circumstances, he said.

He added that the workers cannot be prevented from forming an association — a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution. Meanwhile, nurses continued to stay away from work on Wednesday as well. Association president Hiten Patel said the association leaders wanted to discuss the issues and settle the matter, but there was no response from the management. Despite the strike, 25 to 30 nurses were on duty to attend to the critical patients in the hospital, he added.

Institute appeals nurses to end strike

Authorities at the U N Mehta Institute of Cardiology and Research Centre on Wednesday appealed to the nurses to end their strike, saying the hospital provided round the clock service to cardiac patients. A press release by the institute said the issue pertains to life and death of the patients, many of whom are poor and are provided treatment free of cost.

Some nurses are on duty and others should end the strike and join back. But the statement said nothing about the demands of the nurses. Association president Hiten Patel said the nurses on duty are in agreement with the issues raised by the association, but have reported on duty in the interest of the patients.

Source: Indian Express

When the matter came up for hearing in the court of CBI Judge G K Upadhyay, Shah’s lawyer Mitesh Amin requested adjournment in the matter saying that their senior counsel Ram Jethmalani was unable to be present.

Amin said he had informed the central investigation agency about the matter in advance and it did not raise any objection in this regard following which it was adjourned till August 17.

However, Mukul Sinha, lawyer of Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin, who wants to become a party in the case and was opposing the bail of Shah, raised a few objections.

Sinha submitted before the court that Shah’s lawyers have not filed reply to the notice which was issued to them on his application of becoming a party in the case last week.

He asked why his right of being heard as an affected party curtailed if the senior lawyers of the accused are not able to remain present.

Based on his submission the court directed Shah’s lawyers to reply to his application by August 13.

In his bail application filed on July 26, a day after his arrest, Shah had said the Congress party played “a very vital role in the Sohrabuddin encounter case to make it a political issue and to utilise the same as an instrument to politically victimise him.”

Negating all the charges against him as false and fabricated, the former minister of state for home said the manner in which CBI carried the investigation in the case, substantiated his apprehension that is was “merely a political game plan of the Central Government”.

“(Central government) was never interested in investigation of the offense (Sohrab case) per se, but was only interested in targeting the ruling party in Gujarat which the Congress is unable to defeat in a democratic way,” Shah’s bail plea stated.

“CBI has acted as a political wing of the Congress party against the applicant (Shah) rather than focusing on investigation in the killing of Sohrabuddin and Kausarbi,” the plea further added.

Shah, a close aide of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, also stated that his arrest was part of a “well-designed attempt” .

Mukul Sinha is representing petitioner Rubabuddin Sheikh, brother of Sohrabuddin Sheikh who was killed, along with his wife Kauser Bi, in a police “encounter” in November 2005 in Gujarat. Gujarat Police officials had claimed that Sohrabuddin was a terrorist on a mission to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The JSM has documents proving otherwise.

Among the most damning information are thousands of phone conversations that Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders had with State police officials. It was largely on account of the JSM’s ground-breaking investigations that Minister of State for Home Amit Shah was arrested in connection with the Sohrabuddin encounter. Sinha spoke to Frontline about what really happened and who was behind the killings. Excerpts:

Why has it taken so long to find out who Sohrabuddin was and why he was killed?

Sohrabuddin was no saint. In fact, he had quite a chequered past. Basically, he was a “tapori” [petty criminal] operating in Rajasthan, particularly among the marble traders. Wherever there is illegal activity, there will be extortion gangs and rival gangs that offer protection. In this case, Sohrabuddin was the extortionist and a certain Hamid Lala the protector.

Sohrabuddin is said to have killed Lala and begun to establish a powerful gang. The marble lobby, finding him to be dangerous, had probably decided to get rid of him. Apparently, Rajasthan wanted to have nothing to do with it, so the marble traders approached Gujarat, a State well known for encounter killings.

Sohrabuddin must have been a criminal, but now the accused are painting him in a bad light so that their crime does not look so heinous. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has said that Sohrabuddin’s antecedents and character are immaterial to the case. The case has taken so long because Amit Shah was the Home Minister of Gujarat and controlled the Criminal Investigation Department [CID] of the police. So we never got to hear the full truth behind the killings until recently.

Was he sabotaging the investigation?

Of course. He had the power to, as he was the Home Minister. It was only after the Supreme Court instructed the Central Bureau of Investigation to take over the case that the investigation was back on track. In all likelihood CID officer Geeta Johri had unearthed the nexus and was therefore pressured to change tack. After submitting a perfectly well-done investigative report, she did a complete about-turn to derail the investigation.

Amit Shah’s arrest is a huge development and has in effect unravelled the Rajasthan link. It is becoming increasingly clear that the killing had very little do with terrorism.

Amit Shah’s arrest has Modi scared. That is why he is making such a big noise about this case. He’s been talking about the CBI shifting the case out of Gujarat and how he will take the fight to the streets. He knows Amit Shah can take him down.

There is no doubt that it was a fake encounter.

Can they really take Modi down?

Well, this time they have caught a big fish. It is impossible that Modi was clueless about what went on behind the Sohrabuddin killing. He has been Home Minister for the past eight years. He will have to answer at some point.

What finally nailed Amit Shah?

Three things nailed him.

1. Phone call records. Tracking Amit Shah’s phone calls in the days after Sohrabuddin’s death gave investigators some vital information on his involvement.

2. The Patel brothers – Dashrath and Raman – let out information on the Minister. These men are successful builders and Amit Shah allegedly extorted vast sums of money from them.

3. The Popular House [a builder's office] firing in December 2004, which is linked to Shah. Apparently, Sohrabuddin and Tulsi Prajapati handled the operation under the instructions of Abhay Chudasama, a senior police official who is linked to Shah. Sohrabuddin fell out with Shah and Chudasama after that incident and so they were out to get him.

N.K. Amin, Deputy Superintendent of Police at the time of the encounter, has offered to turn approver, and his testimony can put Shah in the dock.

Could you give us some information on the data you have, which have helped nail the accused?

Our biggest piece of evidence is the over 10 million records of phone calls made by the key accused in several cases.

For instance, Maya Kodnani’s and Jaydeep Patel’s phone calls were analysed in the days following the Naroda Patiya massacre . Those calls are an investigative tool and give clues about the locations from where the calls were made and to whom they were made. There was enough material in the calls to prove they knew about the massacre. The calls, along with a host of other evidence, were enough to get them arrested.

In this case, we have analysed phone calls from November 23 to 29 made by the MoS [Minister of State Amit Shah] and several policemen. We charted the locations and duration of the calls. The maximum number of phone calls between Amin and Shah were made on the days before and after Sohrabuddin’s killing. Amin’s location corroborated where the couple was hidden and where the killing took place.

However, Amin’s phone was switched off when Kauser Bi was killed, but we were able to trace phone calls made by a policeman travelling with the body. That phone call tracks locations such as the place Kauser Bi’s body may have been burnt. The policeman’s statement says he was asked to collect wood to burn the body on the banks of a river; he followed those instructions. His phone call records show that he was by a river bed on November 29, 2005, the day Kauser Bi was killed.

Through call data you can trace locations, durations, frequency, who called whom, and naturally when these calls were made. Experts on this technology can analyse the data and chart these calls, which finally give investigators crucial information.

How did encounters become such a common occurrence in Ahmedabad?

They were all planned by the state. The authorities, right from the top to the bottom, were supporting it. So these men knew they could get away with it.

Why do they go to such lengths to do it?

Money is a big factor here. Several crores are paid to these men to carry out these encounters. The pretext given is that the man is an enemy but in reality it will be some problem with a business deal. It’s just a “supari” [underworld slang for mercenary killing] job.

Why did both of you and your wife join the fight? Do you see justice coming soon?

We believe in a secular democracy. Everyone has the right to live fairly. This is not a communal thing we are fighting. It is for justice. These encounter cases were becoming more and more common, so it became necessary for us to take on the fight. When Rubabuddin came to us, we just had to help him.

This is the first time a big-time politician has been arrested in Gujarat. He is Modi’s right-hand man. A big extortion racket has been exposed. The nexus between criminals, police and politicians has also been exposed. We are confident that justice will be served eventually.

Source: Frontline

“The Gujarat government likes to keep stories on terror alive,” says Mukul Sinha, leading human rights lawyer based in Gujarat. Thirteen people have been arrested recently under one omnibus FIR for alleged propagation of the banned Maoist ideology in ‘Vibrant Gujarat’.

The FIR (No. I-37/2010, dated February 25, 2010, under sections 120 (B), 121 (A), 124 (A) and 153 A (B) of the Indian Penal Code, and Sections 38, 39 and 40 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 1967) was lodged by Ravindra B Nikam, a sub-inspector with the Special Operations Group of Gujarat Police. It alleges a conspiracy against the State and points to the Maoist movement in Gujarat and north Maharashtra. It does not name any of those who have been arrested. Ironically, not a single instance of Maoist violence has been reported from Gujarat.On June 17, 2010, Abdul Shakeel Basha, a well-known social activist, was picked up by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police while he was leaving for work. His wife, Anju Shakeel, had no clue where he was until Special Cell officers brought Basha to his house in south Delhi for collecting evidence.

Basha, the Gujarat Police alleges, was an active member of the CPI-ML (People’s War) (now CPI-Maoist) from 1996 to 2004 and was trying to spread the Maoist movement in urban areas even after that. Sources close to Basha reveal that he was being followed for 20 days before he was finally arrested. “They even knew what he ate on the platform in Bhopal where he had gone for a public meeting on the gas tragedy,” says one of them. The police even tried linking him with some Islamist organisation, but failed to find any evidence.”I know Basha since 2004 and he has been working with us till 2008. As far as I know, he has no connections with the Naxals,” says Harsh Mander, member of the National Advisory Council (NAC).

Basha worked with him in Aman Biradari, an NGO working with the victims of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and for the homeless in Delhi, before founding another organisation, Haq, in 2008.”Basha has been fighting for the rights of the homeless and poor in Delhi. I have known him since 2004 and he was working closely with us,” says Indu Prakash Singh of Indo-Global Social Service Society, a Delhi-based NGO. He adds that even if Basha had Naxalite links earlier, he has now completely disowned the ideology and was leading a normal life. “How can they arrest someone because he was a member of an organisation that was banned after he had quit it?” he asks.

Hardnews learnt that even the police admit Basha is a “good man” and has an absolutely clean record since 2004. A source revealed that the police is pressurising Basha to become a police approver.Basha had worked in Mumbai after the 1992 pogrom of Muslims, helping the people to start their lives afresh. Shifting to Gujarat later, he worked first with industrial workers and then with Nyayagraha, a campaign of Aman Biradari for providing legal aid to the victims of the 2002 genocide.Basha’s activism has repeatedly exposed illegalities committed by the BJP-led government in Gujarat. “Two years ago, a young boy had been picked up by Gujarat Police from Seelampur in east Delhi. Basha had been instrumental in getting him released. The police had to pay a compensation of Rs 3 lakh to the boy,” informs a close aide of Basha.

Basha is not the only activist behind bars in Gujarat. There are 12 others who were arrested without any evidence of involvement in Maoist activity. One of them, Sulat Pawar, was recently released on bail after the court found no prima facie evidence against him. Pawar, the police alleged, had gone to Kerala for arms training.The civil society in Gujarat is aghast over the spate of arrests. All the arrested activists were working within the framework of the Indian Constitution. Avinash Kulkarni (57) was working with tribals in Dangs district for the last two decades, with the latest thrust being on the implementation of the Forests Rights Act. He was also opposing attempts of the Hindutva forces to instigate tribals against other minorities.

Bharat Pawar (40) was a local resident who had housed Kulkarni in Dangs. Makabhai Chaudhuri (49) and Jayaram Goswami (52) fought for the rights of quarry workers and diamond labourers, while Satyamrao Ambade (47) and Niranjan Mahapatra (37), nabbed from Surat, worked with textile workers’ trade unions. KN Singh (47), arrested from Bhavnagar, worked for local and migrant industrial workers, representing their cases in labour courts.”

No act of violence has been reported till date in which Kulkarni was involved. The police allege that he had sent two people to Kerala for arms training some 10 years ago. So how come they did nothing violent all these years even after being trained?” asks Ambrish Mehta, a civil rights activist who has worked with Kulkarni.Ten of the 13 accused have been arrested on charges of being members of CPI-ML (Janashakti). “Janashakti has been an overground organisation since 1992. Is it a crime to be a member of an overground organisation?” asks Kavita Srivastava of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

Charge-sheets have been filed against 10 of the accused, in which the police claim that they are “professional revolutionaries” and “members of either CPI (Maoist) or CPI-ML (Janashakti)”, and that intending to usurp political power through violence, they had formed a ‘Surat Area Committee’ of the Maoist party. Mukul Sinha rubbishes these allegations, saying there is no Naxal presence in the area. Activists believe it is a ploy to get more funds from the Centre.”

Nothing has been recovered from Basha. The police have not been able to provide any evidence of the conspiracy, neither have they recovered any arms. One of the accused had named Basha in his confession to the police. That confession obviously does not hold ground in the court of law,” Basha’s lawyer Bilal Kagzi told Hardnews from Surat. Indeed, the bail of Sulat Pawar has created hope for activists. “There is no evidence against any of them, except the so-called ‘naxal literature’ the police claims to have seized from the accused. All of them will be ultimately released by the court of law,” says Mehta.

Activists point out that this repression is part of Narendra Modi’s agenda of ‘development’, pitched to assure the corporates that no one will be allowed to stand in their way. “The people who have been arrested are all secular and progressive, and were opposed to this Hindutva regime,” says Hiren Gandhi of Darshan, an NGO where Shrinivas Kurapati (34), another activist arrested for alleged Maoist links, used to work. “Now that the Modi government has been exposed and discredited on the Islamist terror front, this seems to be the new tactic,” says Srivastava.”

It’s a ploy to create a fear psychosis in the state,” says Sinha. This view is also echoed by Harsh Mander. “POTA was indiscriminately used against Muslim youth in the early part of the decade. Now, social activists seem to be their new target,” he told Hardnews.

Police action apart, there are other sinister ways to silence activists. Amit Jethwa, a prominent Right to Information activist, was shot dead near the Gujarat High Court on July 20, 2010, where he had filed a Public Interest Litigation charging Dinubhai Boghabhai Solanki, BJP MP from Junagadh, with running illegal mines and stone crushers in the Gir forest and on the Saurashtra coast. Jethwa’s father has alleged that the MP is behind this brutal murder. The MP is since absconding.”Anybody taking up issues that concern the bread and butter of the poor can be branded a Maoist. This witch-hunt is going on across the country,” says Gautam Navlakha, PUDR.Many others share this view. “The State does not want people to organise themselves. All those arrested are either trade unionists or were organising the tribals.

Anybody engaged in organising tribals can be termed a Maoist and put behind bars,” says Colin Gonsalves, senior Supreme Court lawyer.

Source: Hard News

There are grains of truth in all of this. Shah’s arrest measures very high on India’s political Richter scale. It is not just that he is the first serving minister in the history of independent India to be arrested on charges as serious as murder, extortion, suppression of evidence and conspiracy, among other things. What makes his arrest even more explosive is the fact that a political hyphen joins him to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Not only did Shah hold an astonishing 10 ministries in the Modi dispensation, he was the Minister of State for Home, which was helmed by Modi himself. There is very little Shah could have been doing without Modi’s knowledge: there is very little mud one can throw on Shah which would not stick to his mentor.

So, yes, it would be difficult to deny the ambiguous roles the CBI has played recently in cases involving Quattrocchi, Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav. The Congress certainly has a lot to gain from trumping Narendra Modi, and through him, the BJP. And it is true some aspects of the evidence against Shah would probably look thin in court.

But unfortunately for the party, the scales weigh heavily in favour of Shah’s complicity and direct involvement in a vast spectrum of crimes. TEHELKA has been tracking the Sohrabuddin ‘encounter’ story since 2007 and was the first to publish the call records that proved to be Shah’s undoing (Gujarat Home Minister called cops arrested for killing Tulsi Prajapati, 3 July). Now, it has fresh information that proves Shah will find it extremely difficult to subvert the wheels of justice that have begun to grind around him.

“There is no doubt this arrest is a big challenge, but we will fight it legally. How can you call this evidence?” says a senior BJP leader, requesting anonymity. “What value do the stings have? Will they stand in court?”

To counter these questions, the story so far in a nutshell. Sohrabuddin, an extortionist, was killed by Gujarat police on 26 November 2005. His wife Kauser Bi was raped, sedated with chemicals and burnt. Sohrabuddin was declared an LeT terrorist on a mission to kill Modi, the ‘encounter’ touted as a badge of Gujarati pride. A year after the first ‘encounters’, in December 2006, Tulsi Prajapati, the only eyewitness and a Sohrabuddin accomplice, was also shot dead.

Soon after the murders, the cover-ups began. The case was handed over to the CID, which functions directly under the Home Ministry — Shah and Modi — and was batted to several police officers, who either diluted the evidence under political pressure or were transferred if they failed to comply. And so the case straggled on.

Finally, dismayed by the obfuscations, Sohrabbudin’s brother Rubabuddin petitioned the Supreme Court, which handed the case over to the CBI in January 2010, with a directive to uncover the “possibility of a larger conspiracy”.

Since then, the skeletons have been tumbling out. On 29 April, the CBI arrested Ajay Chudasama, DCP (Crime) and Joint Commissioner of Police, who has 197 complaints of extortion and harassment against him. Chudasama features in another TEHELKA story, in which a Muslim boy who admits to being part of a terror conspiracy speaks of the officer forcing him to implicate innocents (8 August 2009). Alarmed by Chudasama’s arrest, the state CID arrested several other officers to prevent the CBI from taking them into custody. But the truth had begun to spill.

So no matter how much the BJP tries to blunt the issue, Shah and Modi face a minefield of evidence and uncomfortable questions. And there are many new developments they need to fear.

First of all, there is a battery of disgruntled and complicit police officers now willing to turn approver or prosecution witness. IGP Geeta Johri is one of them. Handed the case twice, she is an example of the complex ways in which Modi and Shah seem to have weighed in on officers handling the case. Johri was forced to go along when ex-CID chief OP Mathur allegedly tampered with Shah’s call records. She filed a secret note to the Supreme Court complaining of “political pressure.”

Despite this, Johri changed course and was later chastised by the Supreme Court for “not conducting the investigation in a fair manner”. Now the CBI is set to make her a witness when she returns from London on August 8. Johri should have much to reveal. For instance, when she and fellow officer VL Solanki asked GC Raigar, ADGP CID, for permission to interrogate Tulsi Prajapati, they were fobbed off till Prajapati was shot a week later.

Another officer thwarted in the line of duty was DGP CID Rajnish Rai, who arrested killer cops DG Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandyan and Dinesh MN in 2007. When he sought to put them through narco analysis, he was swiftly sidelined. He is now on study leave.

Damagingly, a CID note to the CBI talks of “uncalled for restrictions on the movement of officers” and of how “progress in the investigations was communicated to the accused persons allowing them the opportunity to influence witnesses”. It also speaks of how Rai’s arrests were frowned upon by the “political dispensation”. As a “consequence”, it says, the government issued an order dated 27 March 2007 stating that Raigar would henceforth oversee the case.

Interestingly though, the CID note says the CBI must look into why a departmental inquiry pending against Johri’s husband, IFS officer Anil Johri, which included serious charges of corruption, was diluted in October 2008. This could explain why Johri, who began zealously, seemed to have compromised on her investigation later.

Crucially, Raigar himself is now set to become a prosecution witness. He is likely to talk first-hand about a meeting in which Shah directly asked him and Johri to stall the investigation, which was first reported by TEHELKA (23 January 2010).

There are many more damning questions of interference and favour that Shah and Modi can be asked to answer:

• Why was NK Amin brought in to assist Rai when Rai had specifically written in an official communication that no officer who had previously worked with tainted officers Vanzara and Pandyan should be involved in the case?

• Why was DIG Vanzara transferred as DIG Border Range just days before Prajapati’s encounter?

• Why was ex-CID chief OP Mathur — now due to be arrested by the CBI — rewarded with a posting as Commissioner of Police in Ahmedabad City? Why was a departmental enquiry against his “moral turpitude” dropped in September 2008, followed by a promotion in February 2009?

The moment the CBI takes over the Prajapati case, it will look into the factors that led to his encounter and the attempts to change the course of the investigation. That buck is not going to stop with Shah: since each of these orders were given by the Home Ministry, it will roll all the way to Modi’s door.

THE STORY of the police officers is only one piece of the jigsaw that looks set to nail Shah and damage Modi’s reputation severely — if not permanently — on the national stage.

• TEHELKA has previously published (July 3; July 17) a detailed analysis of the context and disconcerting volume of calls — over 155 of them — between Amit Shah and several cops like Vanzara, Pandyan and Agarwal, who are directly implicated in the murders of Sohrabuddin and Tulsi Prajapati. The calls were being monitored in a case under the Official Secrets Act, 2005. The case diary mentioned that the frequency of calls was “unnatural and uncommon in nature” and “not part of official decorum”. But the case was closed in 2009 without further investigation. Why did Modi not act on any of this information?

• The reason there are no calls, as the BJP asserts, between Shah and the cops on the days the three victims were killed is because the call records were fudged. In a foolhardy slip, though, Mathur seems to have erased the calls only on the days of the murders and immediately after. The CBI now has a copy of the original records, which show that Shah did call the killer cops on those dates. Who ordered these records to be fudged?

• TEHELKA also now has an incriminating copy of call records between Shah and NK Amin, the cop who administered the sedative to Kauser Bi after she was raped between 23 and 29 November 2005, which straddles the exact dates when Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi were kidnapped till they were killed. Amin has turned approver and Shah and Modi have much to fear from his revelations, as he has implicated himself in all the crimes. Amin, a shrewd cop who has a shady history of custodial deaths, was also involved in the ‘encounter’ of Ishrat Jahan, another Muslim girl projected as a dreaded terrorist. The CBI has now found that Ishrat Jahan and Javed Pranesh Pillai were kept at the same place — Arham farm — where Kauser Bi was incarcerated and killed. The owner Rajendra Jirawala has been arrested. Another Pandora’s box awaits.

• Among the cops in custody for these encounters, Balkrishna Chaubey is alleged to have raped Kauser Bi and Vanzara is alleged to have burnt her body. But who gave the order to kill? In a shrewd move, Amin has a sting recording of NV Chauhan, a co-accused in Sabarmati jail, who says Vanzara kept getting calls from Shah while Kauser Bi was in their custody and it’s he who ordered that she be bumped off. Lawyers say this can be taken as evidence under the amended Section 29 (A) of the Evidence Act, especially as there are corroborative statements by the same witnesses before judicial magistrates.

• While the Gujarat riots have stained Modi indelibly with a communal taint, as was demonstrated recently in the face-off with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, he has ridden strong on a reputation of financial probity. However, that too seems under serious assault now. Contrary to the claim of protecting the Hindu nation from Muslim assault, it turns out that Modi’s protégé, Shah, was involved in an extortion racket run by select cops under him, in conjunction with men like Sohrabuddin and Prajapati. As has now been widely reported, Sohrabuddin was allegedly bumped off on the request of an irate marble lobby in Rajasthan, from whom he was demanding an extra cut.

• There are also complaints by Raman and Dashrat Patel, who own Popular Builders. In a complicated story, their office was apparently shot at by Prajapati and another accomplice called Sylvester at Shah’s behest, so as to implicate Sohrabuddin in a false case. These men now allege that Shah had asked them for Rs 70 lakh through Ajay Patel, chairman of the Ahmedabad district co-operative bank (which is headed by Shah). These men also conducted a sting on Ajay Patel, in which he apparently talks of how they needed to fix Sohrabuddin and Shah’s collusion in it. At best, though, this sting can only serve as additional evidence.

EVERY MODI-WATCHER knows the state of Gujarat has become too small for him: he wants a play at the bigger crown. But as events unfold in Gujarat at a rapid pace, that crown looks increasingly a distant dream. A senior BJP leader says the party is willing to walk the “tightrope” and risk alienating their NDA allies for a while to take up cudgels for Shah — or more accurately, the man whose shadow he walked in. But things look bleak for Modi: he has already been cut to size. He has not been able to protect either Maya Kodnani, who resigned as minister of state for education last year and surrendered before the Special Investigation Team, or Shah or the many officers who ran the state’s dirty tricks department. The iron man is starting to look a little flabby. Yet, if he strikes a more strident note, the larger crown will slip away further as his untouchability grows.

If he could have foreseen this Shakespearean twist in his life, Narendra Modi would probably have played it more wisely. But how could he know that the murder of a petty extortionist — cynically masqueraded as a terrorist — would come back to haunt him like Banquo’s ghost?

Source: Tehelka

Earlier, Mukul Sinha, lawyer for Sadik’s brother Shabbir, in his argument read an FIR and other primary documents related to the case. But the hearing was adjourned due to paucity of time.

Earlier petitioner Shabbir had moved a plea seeking speedy hearing of thepetition seeking CBI probe in the case. The petition raised doubts against DG Vanzara, who is lodged in Sabarmati jail, in connection with the Sohrabuddin encounter, and PP Pandey, then joint commissioner of police of DCB.

Sadik was killed in an encounter with cops of the crime branch on January 13, 2003 in Naroda area. The cops claimed that Jamal was on a mission to kill Narendra Modi, LK Advani and other BJP leaders.

Shabbir submitted in the petition that the story was concocted by DG Vanzara and PP Pandey. He further submitted that Sadik was actually in the custody of Pandey and Vanzara at Bungalow No.15 which was the DCB office in Shahibaug from January 3 to 13, 2003.

Source: DNA

The CBI today filed charges of murder and criminal conspiracy against Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case even as a special court turned down his anticipatory bail plea.

The Gujarat junior home minister and Narendra Modi confidant can now be arrested at any minute unless he gets bail from the high court.

Shah did not appear before the CBI for the second consecutive day, possibly fearing that he would be arrested at the end of questioning. The CBI had issued him two summons, both of which he ignored.

Instead of Shah appearing before the CBI by 1pm today, his counsel, Mitesh Amin, showed up around 12.45pm. Amin requested the CBI to hand him a questionnaire and sought more time to prepare the response to the five-year-old case.

The CBI, however, turned down Amin’s request, saying a person who had been issued summons could not be given a questionnaire because that was not the way the agency functioned. Amin then applied for Shah’s bail, but that too was rejected.

Sources said Shah, who has been missing over the last few days, may have ignored the summons a second time to delay his possible arrest. In a statement yesterday, he had said he would appear before the CBI and co-operate with it.

Around 2.30pm, CBI officials visited Shah’s office to track him down. But his personal secretary told them he was “clueless” about his boss’s whereabouts. In the last few days, Shah has skipped four cabinet meetings, has not used his official car and has kept his mobile switched off.

In the 77-page chargesheet, the CBI named Shah as an accused, along with two of his aides who have not been arrested yet. The aides are Ajay Patel and Yashpal Chudasama, respectively the director and chairman of the Ahmedabad Co-operative District Bank. Shah has been charged with murder, criminal conspiracy to abduct and destruction of evidence.

The timing of the chargesheet is linked to Abhay Chudasama, one of three senior Gujarat police officers held in the case. Since the chargesheet had to be filed within 90 days of Chudasama’s April 28 arrest, it was done today, CBI officers said.

A rights group, Jansangharsh Manch, today urged the Gujarat governor to remove Shah as minister. But he appears to have the BJP’s backing because he is one of chief minister Modi’s confidants and is also very close to L.K. Advani. Shah is the MLA from Farkhez Assembly segment, which is in Advani’s Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency and is the largest in terms of population in the state.

Sohrabuddin, a small-time extortionist, and his wife Kauserbibi were pulled out of a bus and shot dead on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in November 2005. At that time, Gujarat’s anti-terror squad, headed by D.G. Vanzara, had claimed Sohrabuddin was a terrorist who planned to assassinate Modi.

The CBI, according to a television report, has mentioned in today’s chargesheet that Sohrabuddin was killed because he had threatened the marble lobby in the state.

In 2007, the Gujarat government admitted in court that Sohrabuddin and Kauserbi had been wrongly killed. Some of the state’s senior policemen are in jail in connection with the case, including Rajkumar Pandian and Vanzara. The CBI has phone records showing that these policemen were in close and constant touch with Shah.

The case was handed to the CBI by the apex court, which was unhappy with the CID’s tardy rate of investigations.

The call records for the week in which the planning and execution of the Prajapati encounter took place are in TEHELKA’S possession. Calls exchanged by Shah, DIG DG Vanzara, Superintendent of Police (SP) Vipul Kumar, IPS officer Dinesh MN of Rajasthan Police and SP Rajkumar Pandyan of the Gujarat Police suggest a sinister plan to eliminate the sole witness in the state-executed Sohrabuddin encounter.

While the revelation that the officers constantly talked with each other the night of the encounter comes as a big shock, what is even more damning is the fact that they were talking to the MoS. As per protocol, an MoS normally talks to the Home Secretary and the Chief Secretary. If he needs to be briefed, he talk to the chief of the Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) or the crime branch. He would not normally talk to SP-level officers.

Tulsiram Prajapati and Sohrabuddin Sheikh, it has been established, were extortionists working at the behest of elements in the Gujarat and Rajasthan police, as proved by the arrest of high profile officers like Abhay Chudasama in May this year. TEHELKA in its revealing report on the findings of the CBI inquiry (Not All’s Well with Your Home, Minister, June 5, 2010) had exposed the role of these officers in the Sohrabuddin as well as the Prajapati case. It had also first reported the evidence against Shah and his involvement in the state-led encounters.

Following on that, it now presents evidence that vindicates its stand that the minister was indeed party to the Tulsi Prajapati encounter, a case which is still with the CID (Crime) of the state. This department, which had slept over the files for the past four years, suddenly sprang into action after the case was handed over to the CBI by the Supreme Court

What is equally shocking is that this evidence was with the state CID for the past four years. Officers like Vanzara, Dinesh MN and Rajkumar Pandyan — who are now proved to have been a part of the Prajapati encounter — were already in its custody in the Sohrabuddin case. It also needs to be noted that the man who first arrested the three officers was later summarily transferred and the case was handed to IGP Geeta Johri, who was later pulled up by the Supreme Court for not making headway in the two encounter cases. The apex court, while transferring the case to the CBI in response to a petition filed by Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin, observed, “Geeta Johri was not conducting the investigation in a fair manner.”

What also went against Johri were attempts by the CID not to take into consideration the call records that were in her possession, going by the claims of advocates representing the case for Prajapati’s family. Advocate Mukul Sinha, whose organisation Jan Sangharsh Manch has been fighting to expose the various encounters and is also representing the case filed by Prajapati’s mother Narmada, sent in a notice to CID to stop investigating the case on her behalf as he felt that the CID’s sudden interest in the case was suspicious.

BUT WHAT is the real story of Tulsi Prajapati? It is important to know the chain of events that preceded the encounter to establish the connivance of the state and the police officers in the conspiracy.
• On December 13, 2006, VL Solanki, investigating officer of CID (Crime), seeks permission to proceed to Rajasthan to record the statement of Prajapati, the only witness in the Sohrabuddin case. Permission denied by the Gujarat CID
• Gujarat ATS chief DIG Vanzara transferred as DIG Border Range (as the encounter site in Banaskantha falls in the same jurisdiction)
• Tulsiram Prajapati addresses letter to the Udaipur court (where he has been arrested in a murder case), that on his way to depose in a firing case he will be killed in a fake encounter
• Summons issued to Rajasthan police by the Ahmedabad police asks Tulsi to be present in court in the Navrangpura Popular case
• On his way back to Rajasthan, just as Prajapati fears, he is shot dead. In the FIR filed by the police at that time, it is said that in the train, his accomplices threw chilli powder in the eyes of the police escorts and fired on the police escort

HOWEVER, THE statements of the officers and the forensic reports contradict this. FSL reports say there was a possibility that the injury inflicted upon Ashish Pandya, the senior Inspector who shot at Pandya, could have been self-inflicted. There was no trace of chilli powder in the compartment and one of the bullets, which was fired at the police officer, was from a 0.38 bore revolver, used by the police force.

Moreover, the chain of events that night also laid bare the contradictions that the officers gave in their statement. According to an ex-investigating official in the case, the decision to kill Prajapati was taken on December 25 itself between DIG Vanzara, highranking officials and the Home Minister. Vanzara asked Vipul Agarwal to get his trusted officer Ashish Pandya who was posted with the Banaskantha unit to cut short his leave and report to work. Vipul Agarwal takes a night shift on December 27, is in constant touch with Vanzara and Pandyan. On December 28 at 4.30 am, the officials proceed from Ambaji with three counterparts from the Rajasthan Police and the fatal encounter takes place at 5 am.

Shah makes the last call on December 27 to Rajkumar Pandyan, who is planning the entire controversy. Vipul, Rajkumar and Vanzara are in touch with each other through thatnight and early the next morning till the encounter takes place. Even if one were to go by protocol in this case, what also goes against Dinesh MN, the Rajasthan cop, is that he had been in touch with Vanzara and Pandyan from as early as December 20, 2006. This, when there was no news that Prajapati would be even brought in by Rajasthan Police to Ahmedabad. It is on the basis of these call records that a former CID officer was later shunted out as he was on the verge of questioning Shah in 2007 itself.

Not just this, Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandyan and Dinesh MN, who were taken into custody for their involvement in the Sohrabuddin encounter, have still not been arrested in the Prajapati case. The CID did have these records, which is proved by an affidavit by Geeta Johri herself that the call records had been ‘misplaced’. Johri was the investigating officer in the Sohrabuddin as well as Prajapati cases. In the affidavit submitted as early as 2007, a copy of which is with TEHELKA, Johri says, “I say that the CD containing the call data was being supervised by the then IG Rajnish Rai when the aforesaid was supervising the said case. All other data subsequently collected pertaining to the call records is very much available with the investigating officer of the ATS and all data relevant in the case has been brought on record.”

A former investigating official of the CID who had been a part of the investigating team also says that the reason why Vanzara and Pandiyan were not taken in custody in the Prajapati case is because this would directly link them to the Sohrabuddin case. Not just them, but also Shah, who has until now been shielded.

Congress leader Arjun Modwadia, when asked to comment on the call records accessed by TEHELKA, said that he had been asking on this very basis for the arrest of Shah and Narendra Modi. “What more evidence does the CID need? Not just Amit Shah, whose role is established in all the encounters in Gujarat, but even Narendra Modi should be arrested. Why was Vanzara transferred as DIG Border Range just days before the encounter takes place in that area? I would ask on behalf of the Gujarat Congress to hand over the Tulsi Prajapati encounter also to the CBI”.

CBI officials investigating the case maintain that in spite of the Supreme Court directing the CBI to investigate the larger conspiracy, they had never been provided with the call records and papers pertaining to the Prajapati case. It was only when the CID realised that one of the key IPS officers Vipul Agarwal who was involved in the case could be caught, that they quickly arrested him in May and for the first time gave a statement that Prajapati encounter looked to be fake. Advocate Mukul Sinha, fighting the case on behalf of the Prajapati family, alleges, “Tulsi was killed at the behest of Shah and certain other politicians from Rajasthan as he was the star witness in the Sohrabuddin case.

In our previous story we had mentioned that the noose was tightening around Shah. Now we have evidence that directly indicts Shah in the case. The CBI, which has been gathering evidence to arrest Shah and has got witnesses testifying against him under Section 164 of the IPC, is also looking forward to making one of Shah’s closest aides a witness in the case, equipped also with the phone records. An official from the CBI investigating the case says that they have still not managed to get together some significant phone records of the 2005 Sohrabuddin encounter, which have either been destroyed or botched up and which directly show Amit Shah’s telephonic records also during the Sohrabuddin encounter

SO THE question remains: how long will the state be able to protect Amit Shah, against whom all evidence is now present? How will it be able to justify its inaction in various corruption cases against the Minister of State for Home, which also directly link the Chief Minister of Gujarat? A 2005 report submitted by then Additional DGP CID Kuldeep Sharma to the then Chief Secretary of the state Sudhir Mankad has alleged that Shah accepted a bribe of Rs 2.5 crore through his intermediary Girish Dani from scamster Ketan Parekh. The report, a copy of which is available with TEHELKA, shows that Dani had organised a meeting between Shah and Ketan Parekh at his residence in October 2004 and 31 phone calls were exchanged between Shah and Parekh. Parekh, who was involved in the famous Rs 1,600 crore Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative scam (Shah is the director of Madhavpura Bank) had taken a bribe from Parekh to withdraw the special leave petition against Parekh. No action was taken against Shah on the report filed by the CID asking CM Narendra Modi to conduct an inquiry in this case. The officer involved in preparing the report was later chargesheeted and now languishes in an inconsequential posting. The bigger question now is: in the face of all this evidence, will the BJP still be able to shield Narendra Modi?

Source: Tehelka