New Delhi: The CBI is likely to take the
custody of former junior Gujarat home minister Amit Shah next week
after examining two senior police officials including Geetha
Johri, who was part of the Supreme Court-appointed Special
Investigation Team probing the 2002 communal riots.
Sources in the investigating agency said that Shah,
who was arrested in Gandhinagar on Sunday after he surrendered,
needs to be confronted with some people who were being
examined by the CBI in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh
fake encounter case.
A close aide of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, 46-year
-old Shah on Saturday resigned as Minister of State for Home.
Modi said Shah was "innocent" and a law-abiding citizen and
charged that a pick-and-choose approach was being pursued
against Gujarat.
Modi said CBI was being used as a political weapon to
settle political scores.
They said the agency would be examining 53-year-old
Johri, a 1982 batch IPS officer, and record her statement
besides that of former Ahmedabad Police Commissioner O P
Mathur, who retired last year on March 31, 2009. Some more
police officials and individuals would also be examined by the
CBI.
The sources said that after examining them and some
others, the CBI would take the custody Shah, who has been sent
to Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad till August seven, for a
thorough interrogation.
They said that he would also be confronted with some
of the police officials already in custody after taking
the permission from courts.
Shah has been charged under IPC Sections 302 (murder),
120 B (conspiracy), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful
confinement), 364, 365 and 368 (all related to kidnapping),
384 (extortion) and 201 (disappearance of evidence).
Shah claimed that he was innocent and said that
charges against him were "fabricated, politically motivated
and were on the instruction of Congress government" and
demanded that his entire questioning by the CBI be
video-graphed.
PTI
