JOIN US46-year-old Shah, who resigned from the Modi government yesterday following a charge sheet being filed against him, turned up at the BJP office in Ahmedabad, where he denied all the charges against him.
He then drove to the Gandhinagar office of the CBI and surrendered before the agency which arrested him and produced him before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate A Y Dave.
Surprisingly, the CBI did not press for custody of Shah, who has been charged with murder, extortion, kidnapping and five other sections under IPC for the killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi in 2005. He was remanded by the magistrate in judicial custody for 13 days till August 7 and taken to Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad.
"I have full faith in the judiciary and I am sure the allegations against me will be cleared by the courts," Shah said after he appeared during a press conference called by state BJP president R C Faldu at the BJP headquarters in Ahmedabad, ending the suspense of his whereabouts since Thursday when he was first summoned by the CBI.
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 should be video-graphed.
Shah, who is elected from Sarkhej constituency and had been minister of state for home in the Modi government since 2002, also said that the Chief Minister should not be dragged into the issue.
"There is no need to drag Chief Minister Narendra Modi into this issue," he said reply to a reporter's query.
Later he went to the CBI office in Gandhinagar. Waving to the mediapersons after alighting from his car, he found that officers of the probe agency were waiting for him.
The BJP slammed Shah's arrest accusing the central government of misusing the CBI, an allegation dismissed by the Congress which said that the probe agency would not risk the wrath of the Supreme Court by levelling false charges.
"Do you think CBI is full of a bunch of fools who will risk their entire career by making false allegations, non-existing allegations which are going to be examined by the Supreme Court," Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.
"Charge sheet is not made overnight. Charge sheet is a collection of evidence.... Here over five-six months of investigation the CBI has got enough evidence against Amit Shah," Singhvi said.
The party said Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi should also be prepared to face some "uncomfortable" questions in the probe.
The CBI, which took over the investigation of fake encounter case in January this year on the orders of Supreme Court, had sent two summons to Shah on Thursday, but he did not appear before the agency and went underground.
Sources in CBI said that it is likely to take the custody of 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.
Backing Shah, the BJP accused the CBI of working in a partisan manner by targeting Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, where it has governments, and ignoring the Andhra Pradesh angle in the Sohrabuddin case as the Congress is in power in that state.
"Sohrabuddin Sheikh was a terrorist from whose premises in Indore nearly 300 AK-47s were recovered. He used to operate an inter-state gang.
"Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are under CBI radar but the Andhra Pradesh angle (in the fake encounter case) is not being investigated at all as Congress is in power there," BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
The CBI on Friday filed a charge sheet in the special court charging him with section 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) of IPC.
Before his arrest, Shah said, "The incident happened five years back. But the CBI acted in such haste that they did not even give me enough time to reply. I will respond to all the charges and will expose the people who are behind bringing of these allegations.
"This is a ploy of the Congress government to carry out our political encounter as the party has not come to power in Gujarat for the last 20 years. I will fight the legal battle in the court of law and the party will fight the political battle at political level," the BJP leader said.
Shah said, "Congress leaders are saying that Sohrabuddin was a petty criminal. It was Sohrabuddin from whose house more than 40 AK-47, 100 hand grenades and ammunition worth Rs 1 lakh were recovered. He was wanted by the police of five states and he had 40 cases against him.
"When the army of Pakistan will come then only they might think that they are criminals. Nation is not safe in the hands of Congress," Shah said.
Modi, who was in New Delhi yesterday to attend a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC), had said that Shah was "completely innocent" and that the charges against him were "politically motivated".
Teams of CBI had been searching for Shah and other accused at various locations after the filing of the charge sheet against them. Shah's anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Special CBI Court on Friday.
The charge sheet has named Shah as a key accused along with IPS officers D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian, M N Dinesh and Abhay Chudasama. In all, 15 accused have been named.
According to the charge sheet, it was Shah who had entrusted the task of eliminating Sheikh, an alleged gangster, to Vanzara, Pandia and Chudasama.
In a reply to a question on where he was during the last couple of days, Shah shot back, "I was at the residence of one of the friends like you journalists.
He termed the CBI's move to summon him as a drama saying the agency had already prepared 30,000 page charge sheet in the case.
"How can they file the charge sheet showing me as an accused in just couple of hours after expiry of deadline for my appearance before them?" he asked.
Shah rose from being a district level worker to one of the most powerful men in BJP due to his proximity to Modi.
A science graduate, Shah was first entrusted with the responsibility of BJP's Yuva Morcha by Modi some 20 years ago.
Shah replaced Haren Pandya as minister of state for home in 2002.