CBI trying to frame me in Shehla murder, claims accused

Interior designer Zahida Parvez, arrested in RTI activist Shehla Masood’s murder case, on Tuesday alleged the CBI was framing her and her assistant Saba Farooqui.

Interior designer Zahida Parvez, arrested in RTI activist Shehla Masood’s murder case, on Tuesday alleged the CBI was framing her and her assistant Saba Farooqui.

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“It is a deal between the mastermind of the murder and the agency. The CBI is unnecessarily trying to frame us,” Parvez said outside a court where she was produced along with Farooqui and two other accused in the case.

Parvez, however, did not name the “mastermind”. “He is the one whose name surfaced at the beginning of the case. He is the mastermind,” Parvez, with Farooqui in agreement, said.

The allegation came even as the special CBI court extended the judicial custody of Parvez, Farooqui and the alleged shooters Saqib ‘Danger’ and Irfan till April 11. Masood was shot on August 16 last year outside her house.

Before police took the two women accused to the district jail, Parvez told reporters to ask the CBI why it was protecting the “mastermind”.

Earlier, defence counsel of BJP MLA Dhruv Narayan Singh, whose name figured in the case, filed a plea saying the court was “misled” by the CBI on the polygraph test on him.