SC relief for Amit Shah in Prajapati case

Newly appointed BJP general secretary Amit Shah got a major relief on Monday after the Supreme Court restrained CBI from conducting a separate trial against him in the Tulsiram Prajapati murder case.

Newly appointed BJP general secretary Amit Shah got a major relief on Monday after the Supreme Court restrained CBI from conducting a separate trial against him in the Tulsiram Prajapati murder case.

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Shah, a close aide of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is out on bail after spending three months in jail in the Soharabuddin Sheikh encounter case. Both incidents date back to 2006 when Shah was Gujarat’s home minister.

A bench headed by Justice P Sathasivam quashed the CBI FIR registered against Shah, saying the Prajapati murder case would be heard by the same court that is already seized of the Soharabuddin case.

The verdict came on Shah’s plea challenging CBI’s move to file a separate chargesheet in Prajapati murder. It held the second FIR was contrary to SC’s earlier direction permitting CBI to probe the Prajapati case after the agency contended both murders were part of the same conspiracy.

The court further held that CBI’s chargesheet in the Prajapati case would be supplementary to the one filed in the Soharabuddin fake encounter case. This implies that Shah would not need to apply for fresh bail for his alleged involvement in Prajapati’s murder.

SC clarified it had not gone into the merits of the CBI charges against Shah and left it to the trial court to decide in accordance with law.