CBI has egg on its face—The Pioneer—19.11.11

`Evidence' against Amit Shah `absolute trash'!

With the Supreme Court spurning the `evidence' -which has been described as “absolute trash“ -presented by the Central Bureau of Investigation while alleging senior Gujarat BJP leader Amit Shah was involved in an extortion case linked to the so-called encounter killing of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, the agency stands exposed for its shockingly shameful role in trying to falsely implicate the former Home Minister at the behest of its political masters in the Congress. The extent to which a desperate-to-please-Congress CBI is willing to subvert the truth in order to frame Mr Shah and thus malign the BJP Government in Gujarat is evident from the `evidence' it has produced. This `evidence' comprises 200 unsigned, unverifiable, anonymous `complaints' on which, the agency laughably insists, Chief Minister Narendra Modi refused to act in order to protect Mr Shah. Even a bunch of amateurs would have tried harder than that to frame a person. That the Supreme Court has found these complaints to be mere “insinuations, wholly unwarranted and totally unfair“ is as much a comment on the CBI's alleged investigative skills as its capacity to undertake a hatchet job. But this is not the first time that the CBI has been found to be resorting to such crude tactics to help its masters achieve their political objectives. Nor is the first occasion that the CBI has cut a sorry figure. If it looks silly and denuded of all credibility after Thursday's rebuke by the Supreme Court, the CBI has only itself to blame.
The CBI's inquiry into Mr Shah's alleged role in Sohrabuddin Sheikh's death was not a genuine police investigation; it was calculated to harass and humiliate Mr Shah and tarnish the reputation of Mr Modi. The purpose was not to get to the bottom of Sohrabuddin Sheikh's death, but to tarnish the BJP.

Four months ago the CBI arrested Mr Shah, accusing him of several violations of the law. The investigators did not even bother to question him although he appeared before them. Officials then told him they did not intend to go through the interrogation process, and proceeded to straightaway produce him before a court for judicial custody, which was a sharp departure from the CBI's usual practice of questioning a suspect before seeking his or her arrest. By accusing him of several offences without interrogating him, the CBI showed its true face. Not surprisingly, despite all these efforts the CBI has miserably failed to get any evidence incriminating Mr Shah in the crimes he is charged with having committed. Hence the anonymous letters, which could have been written by anybody in the Congress's dirty tricks department, have been produced as a last ditch effort to make the CBI's case stick in court. What the Congress and the CBI did not anticipate (which is a measure of their collective intelligence) is that the Supreme Court would see through this fraudulent `evidence' and consign it to the nearest litter bin where it rightly belongs. The CBI deservedly has egg on its face. But so also do the busybodies and self-appointed human rights activists who too have been found to playing fast and loose with facts.