Congress Used Sohrabuddin Case To Try And Destroy Amit Shah: Smriti Irani

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Tuesday accused the Congress leadership of using the CBI to manufacture evidence in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case to “politically destroy” its president Amit Shah who, it said, has come out of this “trial by fire” unscathed.
The ruling party fielded Smriti Irani to attack Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, whom the union minister accused of supporting terrorists in his tweet that said “nobody killed” Sheikh and he “just died”.

Rahul Gandhi had tweeted this after a special CBI court in Mumbai on December 21 acquitted all 22 accused in the case of killing of Sheikh, his wife Kausar Bi and his aide Tulsi Prajapati in alleged fake encounters by Gujarat police between 2005 and 2006 citing insufficient evidence.

Mr Shah, who was the minister of state for home in Gujarat at that time, was also arrested briefly in 2010 in the case before being discharged in December 2014.

Ms Irani said Mr Shah was targeted by the CBI as a part of a “political conspiracy” of the Congress and its then president because Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then Gujarat chief minister, and Mr Shah were seen as political rivals by the party.

“The Congress and its president used the CBI to manufacture evidence to politically destroy Shah. It is one of the finest examples of the length to which the Congress will go to destroy its political opponents,” she said.

She described the case as a trial by fire for Mr Shah and said he came out unscathed, as the country’s verdict had shown that “truth cannot be destroyed”.

There was no immediate response from the Congress to her allegations.