SC rejects petition against Amit Shah in Sohrabuddin encounter case

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former National Advisory Council (NAC) member and social activist Harsh Mander’s petition challenging BJP president

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former National Advisory Council (NAC) member and social activist Harsh Mander’s petition challenging BJP president Amit Shah’s discharge in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, saying he has no locus standi in the matter.

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A small-time gangster, Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi were killed while travelling from Hyderabad to Sangli in Maharashtra near Gandhinagar in 2005.

Mander had sought the quashing of the December 30, 2014, order of a Mumbai sessions court discharging Shah in the case. He then approached the Bombay HC against the sessions court order but the HC in March this year refused to go into the merits of the discharge order on the grounds that Mander was not an aggrieved party in the case.

The former bureaucrat petitioned the HC after Sohrabuddin’s brother withdrew his appeal against Shah’s discharge, which was not even challenged by the CBI. “Only a genuinely aggrieved person can challenge the discharge under the criminal jurisprudence. One must realise the impact of allowing such a petition, which is this person can be interminably prosecuted,” a bench headed by justice SA Bobde told Mander’s counsel, senior advocate Kapil Sibal.

With the SC order and none of the affected parties standing against the trial court verdict, the relief to Shah appears final. “When the person is genuinely aggrieved then the issue takes a different colour but when the person is not remotely connected and wants to revive the case then it’s a different matter,” the bench noted.