In 2010, Amit Shah, then the home minister in the Gujarat state cabinet led by CM Narendra Modi, was arrested by the CBI in the "fake encounter" case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. It was the time of UPA 2, and P. Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister. According to the central investigation agency, Sheikh, an alleged gangster with terrorist links, his wife Kausar Bi, and his aide Tulsi Prajapati, were abducted by the Gujarat police from a bus when they were on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra from Hyderabad on the night of November 22 and 23, 2005.
The CBI claimed Sheikh was killed in a fake encounter near Ahmedabad on November 26 that year, while his wife was killed three days later. Prajapati was killed in a "fake encounter" a year later on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border by policemen from both states.
The agency opposed Amit Shah's bail application and a Supreme Court bench, by the end of 2010, restricted Shah—who was reported absconding for a certain while—from entering Gujarat for two years. When Amit Shah finally returned to his home state, he recited a Gujarati sher, reported IndiaTV,
Mera paani utarte dekh kinare par ghar mat bana lena
mein samundar hoon, laut kar jarur aaoonga
(Thinking the tide has ebbed, don't you dare build your castles on the coast
For I am the sea, and I always come back)
Now, the tables have turned, literally. Amit Shah was the Union Home Minister. A special CBI court in Mumbai on Friday acquitted all the accused in the Sohrabuddin encounter. 16 were discharged for want of evidence. These included Shah, then Rajasthan home minister Gulabchand Kataria, former Gujarat police chief P.C. Pande and former senior Gujarat police officer D.G. Vanzara.
The cross-hair is now on the former home minister P. Chidambaram. The CBI registered an FIR on May 15, 2017, alleging irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance granted to the INX Media group for receiving overseas funds of Rs 305 crore in 2007 during Chidambaram's tenure as finance minister.
Thereafter, the ED, in 2018, lodged a money laundering case in this regard. Chidambaram's alleged role had come under the scanner of various investigating agencies in the Rs 3,500 crore Aircel-Maxis deal and the INX Media case involving Rs 305 crore.
The investigating agencies claimed it was during his tenure as finance minister in the UPA-I government that clearances from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) were given to the two ventures.
After Supreme Court failed to provide him relief on Tuesday, it was widely reported that Chidambaram was absconding. Later, he made a dramatic appearance at the AICC headquarters and addressed a press meet. Flanked by his party colleagues and senior lawyers—Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi—who are also representing him in the cases, Chidambaram said there is no chargesheet filed by either the CBI or the ED before a competent court. He also said the FIR recorded by the CBI does not impute him of any wrongdoing.
"Yet there is a widespread impression that grave offences have been committed by me and that my son and I have committed that offences. Nothing can be further from the truth. These are lies spread by pathological liars," he said, adding that he was granted interim protection by the high court.
High drama unfolded after a team of over 30 CBI sleuths, accompanied by a team of Delhi police, reached Chidambaram's residence and arrested the former finance minister. The televised arrest visuals showed the CBI officials scaling the boundary wall to gain entry into his house as the front gate remained closed. A little later, a team of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) also reached his residence.
-Inputs from PTI
