Mukul Sinha
Arun
Jaitley, on 1st October, 2013, shot a nine page letter to Prime
Minister making the following complaint against CBI in respect of their
investigation in fake encounters cases:
By misuse of investigative agencies they have so far tried various methods of falsely implicating Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shri Amit Shah, the then Home Minister and also the Minister of Law, Transport & Parliamentary Affairs of the State of Gujarat and General Secretary of Bharatiya Janata Party and other important BJP leaders
Firstly,
it would be interesting to note that Jaitley himself has dragged in the
name of Modi within the array of accused in the fake encounters though
CBI has not named Modi at all. Perhaps Jaitley as a lawyer has correctly interpreted the evidence to apprehend the trajectory of the investigation.
Further, while admitting that the
Gujarat State police arrested several police officers of Gujarat
including three IPS officers, Jaitley went on to say that the Supreme
Court transferred the Sohrabuddin case to the CBI as “the investigation involved inter-state ramifications and the Andhra Pradesh angle of the matter had not been probed“.
The Sohrabuddin case was handed over to CBI by the Supreme Court not because of the reasons mentioned by Jaitleybut in Supreme Court’s own words for the following reasons:
This extract is taken from Judgment of the Supreme Court in the case
of Rubabuddin Sheikh v. State of Gujarat reported in (2010) 2 SCC 200,
at page 217:69. We have observed that from the record, it was found that Mr V.L. Solanki, an investigating officer, was proceeding in the right direction, but Ms Johri had not been carrying out the investigation in the right manner, in view of our discussions made here in above. It appears that Ms Johri had not made any reference to the second report of Solanki, and that though his first report was attached with one of her reports, the same was not forwarded to this Court.81. In the present circumstances and in view of the involvement of the police officials the State in this crime, we cannot shut our eyes and direct the State police authorities to continue with the investigation and the charge-sheet and for a proper and fair investigation, we also feel that CBI should be requested to take up the investigation and submit a report in this Court within six months from the date of handing over a copy of this judgment and the records relating to this crime to them.
The Supreme Court therefore specifically noticed the mischief played by Geeta Johri IPS, to derail the further investigation carried
out by V L Solanki, the I.O. appointed by D.G.P. Gujarat and hence
handed over the case to CBI. Solanki gave his statement before the CBI
pointing out that Amit Shah also directed Geeta Johri to destroy the enquiry papers submitted by him which he refused to do.
Regarding the Ishrat-Javed
matter, Jaitley rehashed the allegations that FBI had allegedly made to
the effect that Ishrat was a suicide bomber etc. We need not quote any
more of the ridiculous allegations leveled against CBI except to note
that Jaitley has gone to extent of indirectly charging the Gujarat High
Court to be a party to an oblique political purpose. This is what
Jaitley said:
In a surprise move the Gujarat High Court appointed a 3-member SIT which included a nominee of the Central Government, a nominee of the State Government and a nominee of the writ petitioners. The writ petitioner’s nominee was one Shri Satish Verma, IPS… The police officers of the Central Government were reluctant to be a part of this inquiry since the same was intended to be used for an extraneous political purpose.
In the Javed-Ishrat
case, High Court had appointed a three member SIT which gave the report
that encounter was fake. The report was signed by R K Verma IPS on
behalf of Central Government, Mohan Jha IPS on behalf of State Government and Satish Verma, IPS of Gujarat Poice appointed by Gujarat High Court on behalf of the Petitioner. Jaitley conveniently forgets to mention Mohan Jha who was the Police officer appointed by Gujarat Government and tries to slander Satish Verma as he was appointed by High Court on being named by the petitioner’s advocate (Mukul Sinha). By
innuendo, Jaitley has cast aspersions against the Gujarat High Court by
describing the appointment of the SIT by the High Court as “surprising”
… intended to be used for extraneous political purpose.
The most shocking and false
allegation made by Jaitely in his letter to the Prime Minister is that
“the CBI filed a supplementary charge sheet against Gulab Chand Katariawherein it was alleged that the motive of elimination ofTulsi Prajapati by Gulab Chand Kataria was extorting money from marble dealers of Rajasthan namely RK Marbles”.
Being an eminent lawyer, it’s surprising how poor Mr Jaitley is at
presenting facts and that too when he’s addressing a letter to the Prime
Minister of the country. The CBI has never filed any
supplementary charge-sheet against Kataria in the case of Tulsi
Prajapati but had filed the same in the case of Sohrabuddin charging him
and Vimal Patni, owner of R K Marbles, of eliminating Sohrabuddin and not Tulsi!
There are several allegations
made by Jaitley questioning the authenticity of the statements made by
many witness against Amit Shah and others. Jaitley as a lawyer(?) ought
to know that no criminal procedure permits anybody to question the
authenticity of the evidence given by witnesses except before the
competent trial court. Sending a complaint to the Prime Minister is not
only wholly alien to all known procedures of law but sounds ludicrous
coming from an established lawyer. In fact apart from attacking the CBI
investigation politically, there cannot be any other purpose for writing
this letter.
DG Vanzara, the main accused has
spilled the beans by declaring that all the killings were done under the
close monitoring of the CM and the Home Minister. To pre-empt the
arrest of the Prime Ministerial candidate, Jaitley is now seeking the
intervention of the current Prime Minister. Mr Jaitley, people shall
remember your diabolical role. You are trying to subvert CBI’s
investigation. It is nothing short of abetment!
