Gandhinagar/Ahmedabad: On the run for three days, Gujarat's disgraced former junior minister for home, Amit Shah, was sent to 14-day judicial custody yesterday over an alleged Islamist's murder, hours after he made a dramatic appearance before the media and surrendered to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The drama lasted just about five hours from the time Shah walked into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office in Ahmedabad at 11.35am and angrily denied the charges that he was involved in the 2005 killing of Sohrabuddin Shaikh, an alleged Lakshar-e-Taiba activist.
After making a detailed defence of his case and answering a flurry of questions from journalists, the close aide to Chief Minister Narendra Modi drove to the CBI camp office in the state capital Gandhinagar, about 35km away, accompanied by a large contingent of supporters.
Once the CBI formally arrested him, the process lasting only a few minutes, he was driven back to Ahmedabad where he was taken to the house of CBI judge A.Y. Dave.
Dave ordered Shah's judicial custody for 14 days as a large number of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists ringed his house shouting slogans hailing the man who quit as minister Saturday amid a hunt for him.
The CBI, which surprisingly did not demand for Shah's remand after having summoned him earlier to question him, said it would take his custody if and when required. Yesterday's developments marked a new turn in the case of Sohrabuddin Shaikh that has led to the arrest and jailing of 15 police officers including three from the Indian Police Service.
All of them are accused of conspiring to kill the man in cold blood. His wife has since disappeared, and the chargesheet against them says that she was murdered and her body burnt to destroy evidence.
Shah's arrest has seriously strained relations between the BJP and the Congress-led government, with the BJP accusing the latter of using the CBI to target opposition parties.
‘Vote-bank politics'
The BJP also charged the Congress with "vote-bank politics" — a euphemism to mean the Congress was trying to woo Muslims, India's largest minority.
Earlier yesterday, Gujarat BJP president R.C. Fardu was addressing a press conference at his office when a confident looking Shah suddenly walked in, stunning many of his colleagues and the media alike.
Accused of ordering the killing of Shaikh in a staged gun battle near Ahmedabad in November 2005, Shah insisted: "The accusations against me are fabricated, politically motivated and framed on the behest of the Congress government."
