BJP president Amit Shah, who has filed a discharge plea in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, in his application before a CBI court in Mumbai has argued that “why Tulsiram Prajapati could not have been killed like Kauserbi” if he was an eyewitness. The court is likely to pronounce order on his plea on Tuesday. On the Supreme Court order, the CBI had merged the Tulsiram Prajapati encounter case with the Sohrabuddin case, which also involves the killing of his wife Kauserbi. Claiming that the CBI was a “pliable agency”, Shah in his application said: “First, it is the case of the CBI that Sohrabuddin was killed in encounter and subsequently Kauserbi was killed by the accused police officers since she was a witness. There is nothing on record to suggest as to why Tulsiram could also not have been killed like Kauserbi when he was also an eyewitness as per the CBI and was very much with the accused police officers.” Shah in his application, a copy of which is with The Indian Express, said the CBI has presumed that the third person travelling along with Sohrabuddin and Kauserbi was Tulsiram. “In the entire chargesheet in the case of Tulsiram’s investigation, the applicant (Shah) is implicated in the said offence only on a presumption that the applicant is involved in Sohrabuddin-Kauserbi offence.” According to the CBI, Tulsiram was the third person travelling with Sohrabuddin and his wife when they were picked up by the Gujarat Police team from Hyderabad, days before the husband-wife were killed in Ahmedabad. More than a year later, Tulsiram was also killed allegedly in a stage-managed encounter by the Gujarat Police. Shah has taken on the CBI investigation on several grounds, including the Popular Builders firing case, which is the most crucial case in the whole investigation. In 2004, the Gujarat Police booked Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram and others in a firing case in which they allegedly attacked the office of city-based builders Raman Patel and his brother Dashrath Patel, named as Popular Builders in Navrangpura. The Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) booked Sohrabbuddin and others claiming that firing was carried out by Sohrabuddin’s gang since Patel brothers had allegedly not paid money to the gang for the work they did for the brothers. However, the CBI chargesheet claimed this encounter was stage-managed by a team of Gujarat Police at the behest of Shah (then junior Gujarat home minister) to eliminate Sohrabuddin and his gang due to their alleged extortion racket in marble business in Rajasthan. Contrary to the CBI claim, Shah has mentioned in his discharge application that “two witnesses (of CBI attributed to Patel brothers) are noted land grabbers and even as per their own statements there are several criminal cases pending against them.” Discarding the CBI’s claim that he was involved in the conspiracy to eliminate the victims, which was based on call data records showing Shah constantly in touch with accused IPS officers DG Vanzara and Rajkumar Pandian and Assistant Commissioner of Police NK Amin, the BJP president has claimed, “Considering the style of functioning of Amitbhai Shah as MOS (home), which is evident from his direct contact with the field level IPS officers and the justification of the calls during the aforesaid period, the said calls cannot be made the basis for fascinating criminal culpability.” Shah has claimed that the CBI only picked up his CDR details between November 2005 and December 2006. Shah has said that the CBI should have analysed his call details at least two years before and two years after the offence to draw a conclusion. According to the CBI, 38 calls were exchanged between Shah and Vanzara and 343 between Shah and Pandian that revealed an “unnatural, uncommon and not part of common, regular and routine course of official business”.
