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Posted on 04 September 2012
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TEHELKA IMPACT |
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Tehelka Exposé helped in nailing Amit Shah
Taking cognisance of the evidence against Amit Shah published in TEHELKA, the CBI has chargesheeted the former Gujarat minister and 20 top cops in the Tulsi Prajapati encounter case
Tehelka Bureau
New Delhi
THE CBI has validated TEHELKA’s investigation by naming former Gujarat minister Amit Shah in its chargesheet in the 2006 Tulsi Prajapati fake encounter case. Besides Shah, the chargesheet also names former Gujarat DGP PC Pande, IPS officers OP Mathur, Geeta Johri and RK Patel and 16 other police officers.
Prajapati, shot dead on 28 December 2006, was the sole surviving witness to the December 2005 encounter in which extortionist Sohrabuddin Sheikh was killed. Following an investigation in July 2010, TEHELKA had published Shah’s call records made during the fake encounter of Sheikh and the cold-blooded murder of his wife Kauser Bi. TEHELKA had also published Shah’s call records when Tulsi Prajapati was gunned down by the Gujarat Police (Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah Called Cops Arrested for Killing Tulsi Prajapati, by Rana Ayyub, 3 July 2010).
TEHELKA handed over evidence, including call records accessed during its investigation, to the CBI, establishing that Shah was in constant touch with the officers involved in Prajapati’s encounter.
In the same month, TEHELKA published an internal note of the Gujarat government that said, “…calls made by the minister, Amit Shah, were not a part of the official decorum”, firmly putting Amit Shah in the dock (So why is Narendra Modi protecting Amit Shah? by Rana Ayyub, 17 July 2010).
Following the publication of the note, Shah rushed to meet senior BJP leader LK Advani in Gandhinagar (as reported by the Ahmedabad Mirror). However, it was too late for the BJP or the Gujarat government to save him.
Further investigations by TEHELKA’s Assistant Editor Rana Ayyub revealed the role of senior IPS officers PC Pande, OP Mathur and Geeta Johri in the Prajapati fake encounter.In its chargesheet, the CBI has cited the call records and internal notes as vital evidence, amongst others, against Shah and the police officers.
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The CBI took witness statements and evidence published by Tehelka on record, which led to Amit Shah’s arrest |
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TEHELKA was the first to publish the CBI’s arrest proposal and the Intelligence Bureau’s (IB) inputs to the CBI in the fake encounters case. The CBI proposed to arrest senior Gujarat Police officers after the documents revealed the connivance of the top cops and ministers in conspiring and subverting the probe.
The CBI took various witness statements and the evidence published by TEHELKA on record, which led to Shah’s arrest. As the former minister of state for home, he was considered to be Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s closest aide. Shah became the first serving home minister in India to be sent behind bars on charges as serious as cold-blooded murder, extortion, suppression of evidence and conspiracy.
TEHELKA had also questioned Modi’s role in the fake encounters. Not only did Shah hold 10 ministries in the Modi administration, he was also the minister of state for home, a department headed by Modi himself. There was little Shah could have done without Modi’s knowledge.
More damning are the charges filed by the CBI against Gujarat’s then senior-most police officer PC Pande, controversial for his role in the 2002 riots. Incidentally, Rana Ayyub was threatened during the course of her investigation and asked to refrain from probing the issue.
TEHELKA’s investigation (Dead Man Talking by Rana Ayyub, 3 December 2011) also led to the CBI declaring the Sadiq Jamal killing as another fake encounter, grains of which also look to go in the direction of the now infamous home minister.
letters@tehelka.com
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