Amit Shah, Once Accused in Fake Encounter Cases, Chief Guest at Rights Body Event
Home minister Amit Shah was the chief guest at the National Human Rights Commission’s Foundation Day celebrations on Saturday, October 12.… Though home ministers have been fixtures at NHRC events, he is perhaps the first incumbent to have once been accused of a serious violation of human rights – involvement in the custodial killing of three persons in Gujarat while he was home minister in the state government.
Though Shah was charged by the Central Bureau of Investigation with complicity in the fake encounter killings of a woman, Kausar Bi, her husband Sohrabuddin Shaikh and his associate Tulsiram Prajapati, he was discharged by a CBI special court in December 2014, the year the BJP under Narendra Modi’s leadership came to power at the Centre. The CBI refused to appeal his discharge.
Shah’s name also featured in the ‘Snoopgate’ controversy in 2013 – in which audio recordings of Shah and senior police officers supervising the tailing and tapping of a young woman surfaced.… In another ‘encounter’ case – that of Ishrat Jahan case, a 19-year-old woman killed by the Gujarat police in 2004 – the CBI probed Shah’s role but concluded it had no evidence to make him an accused along with the senior officers who were eventually charged. More recently, Shah has courted controversy by referring to Muslim immigrants in India as “termites”.
SEE ALSO:
- ‘Encounter Politics’ Heats up in UP as Another Man is Killed in Azamgarh (Oct 11, 2019, News Click)
https://www.newsclick.in/encounter-politics-heats-another-man-killed-azamgarh - Demand for CBI inquiry after accused killed in ‘police encounter’ in UP (Oct 7, 2019, Sabrang India)
https://www.sabrangindia.in/article/demand-cbi-inquiry-after-accused-killed-police-encounter - NHRC’s ‘unconditional’ summon to Gujarat jail authorities on Amreli custodial death (Oct 7, 2019, Counterview)
https://www.counterview.net/2019/10/nhrcs-unconditional-summon-to-gujarat.html - Modi Govt Commutes Death Sentence of Prime Accused in Beant Singh Assassination (Oct 5, 2019, The Wire)
https://thewire.in/politics/balwant-singh-rajoana-death-sentence
