Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday launched a blistering attack against BJP President Amit Shah asking if it was ‘appropriate’ for him to remain the head of the saffron party.
Invoking the Holy Book of Hindus, Gita, Gandhi wrote, “The Gita says you can never escape the truth and so it has always been.” He then went on to write on Twitter, “Sandeep Tamgadge has called Amit Shah a “key conspirator” in his testimony. It’s completely appropriate for the BJP to have such a man as its President.”
Gandhi was reacting to a news article on how Tamgadge, a former top investigating officer, had named Shah as a key conspirator in the alleged fake encounter of Tulsiram Prajapati in 2006. According to Indian Express, Tamgadge, a 2001 batch IPS officer from Nagaland cadre, told the special court in Mumbai on Wednesday that Shah and IPS officers Dinesh M N, Rajkumar Pandiyan and D G Vanzara were the ‘principal conspirators’ in the alleged fake encounter of Tulsiram Prajapati in Gujarat in 2006.
Tamgadge had investigated the alleged fake encounter case from April 2012 before being removed from all fake encounter cases in 2014, just before Narendra Modi became the prime minister. He told the court that there was a ‘politician-criminal-police’ nexus adding that Amit Shah and Rajasthan Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria had ‘used criminals’ namely Sohrabuddin Shaikh, Tulsiram and Azam Khan to fire at Popular Builders in 2004. In his deposition, Tamgadge also revealed that Call Data Records (CDRs) of the accused had established their conspiracy to commit the offence.
He also said that Shah benefited financially as he was paid Rs 70 lakh by the Patel brothers, owners of Popular Builders in Ahmedabad. Vanzara, according to a report by The Hindu, too was paid Rs 60 lakh by the Patel brothers.
Tamgadge also added that none of the accused policemen currently facing the trial had any motive to kill Sohrabuddin adding that all, low-rung police personnel, were acting acting under the directions of their superiors Vanzara, Pandiyan, Dinesh and Chudasma.
Shah, Kataria, Dinesh MN, Pandiyan and Vanzara were all discharged between 2014 and 2017 after BJP formed the government at the Centre.
In his testimony on 3 November, Azam Khan, a witness in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh’s fake encounter case, had told a trial court in Mumbai that Vanzara had ordered the cold-blooded murder of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya. Pandya, who served as the state home minister under Narendra Modi as chief minister, was killed in 2003.
Just days after his stunning revelation, as exclusively reported by Janta Ka Reporter, Khan’s wife had move the Rajasthan High Court expressing fears that her husband may be killed in another staged encounter.
Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi were allegedly abducted by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad from Hyderabad on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra. Sheikh was killed in an alleged fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005, after which his wife disappeared and was believed to have been done to death.
Prajapati, an eyewitness to the encounter, was allegedly killed by police at Chapri village in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district in December 2006.
The Sohrabuddin killing case was transferred to Mumbai in September 2012 on the request of CBI for a fair trial. In 2013, the Supreme Court had clubbed the alleged fake encounter case of Prajapati with that of Sheikh.