Three senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders were dragged into a controversy on Monday following allegations, based on a sting operation, that they tried to save Gujarat’s former home minister and Narendra Modi’s right-hand man Amit Shah in the Tulsiram Prajapati “fake encounter” case.
They got “vakalatnamas” (signed affidavits) from Prajapati’s mother and used them to to plant their lawyer to weaken the case.
Prajapati was killed in an encounter in 2006, which is dubbed fake and a case is on in connection with it. The leaders named are Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh point man in the BJP Ram Lal and Rajya Sabha MPs Prakash Javadekar and Bhupendra Yadav.
The BJP refused to comment on the issue saying the allegations did not merit its attention as it was concocted and rubbish.
Congress spokesperson Renuka Chowdhary said the issue was an on-going development and the people concerned will examine it. “The court is not a helpless authority. It will deal with it appropriately,” she said.
Journalist Pushp Kumar Sharma, who conducted the sting operation, filed a PIL in the Supreme Court seeking a CBI inquiry into the alleged criminal conspiracy by “top most (BJP) leaders with the sole intent to help Shah by diluting the case against him, presumably under the instructions of Modi”.
The sting operation, Sharma claimed, brings to light efforts by leaders to obstruct administration of justice.
According to the journalist, Javadekar approached him in January 2012 to facilitate a meeting with Prajapati’s mother Narmadabai. According to him, Javadekar said he wanted to get her compensation from the Gujarat government and he (Sharma) agreed to it considering it as a humanitarian gesture.
Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who was with the journalist at the press conference in which the sting operation was made public, said the allegations which were raised were important and should be probed.
Sharma alleged that in June 2012 he was called to Javadekar’s house where Yadav and former Madhya Pradesh Additional Advocate General Manoj Dwivedi told him that they have to get Narmadabai sign “vakalatnamas” to process Gujarat government’s compensation for her.
“I became suspicious as it was strange to do so and decided to conduct a sting operation,” the journalist said.
The sting operation purportedly showed Dwivedi’s associate Govind Purohit getting six documents signed by Narmadabai in Ujjain on August 3. Sharma said he later came to know that the woman was not given any compensation.
Sharma claimed that he came up with a concocted story to draw the BJP leaders into a conversation to unearth the conspiracy.