Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday hit back at Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s tweet following the verdict which acquitted all 22 people accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.
“NO ONE KILLED... Haren Pandya. Tulsiram Prajapati. Justice Loya. Prakash Thombre. Shrikant Khandalkar. Kauser Bi. Sohrabuddin Shiekh. THEY JUST DIED,” Gandhi had tweeted a day after a special court delivered its verdict on the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case.
Responding to Gandhi’s tweet, Jaitley said it would have been appropriate if Gandhi had asked “the right question, namely who killed Sohrabuddin case investigation?”
Jaitley, in a Facebook post, also criticised the Central Bureau of Investigation. “More relevant than the order of the acquittal is the observation of the judge that in the investigation, from the very beginning, investigating agency did not investigate the case professionally in order to find out the truth but to divert it towards certain political persons,” he said.
Special CBI Judge SJ Sharma, who delivered the verdict, blamed the investigating agency of conducting inquiries with the “preconceived and premeditated” goal to implicate political leaders. Sheikh, a wanted criminal, was killed in an alleged encounter in November 2005. His wife was allegedly raped and killed three days later, and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati was was shot dead by the police in December 2006.
Jaitley also uploaded a copy of a letter he had written as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “detailing the politicisation of the investigation” in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh, Tulsi Prajapati, Ishrat Jahan, Rajinder Rathore and the Haren Pandya cases.
“Every word of what I have said in the letter, over the next five years, have proven to be true,” Jaitley said. “This is an irrefutable evidence of what the Congress did to our investigative agencies. Those who have recently shown a belated concern for institutional independence should seriously introspect as to what they did to the CBI when they were in power,” he said, referring to Congress’s accusation about the Centre interfering in the agency’s work.
Limited-time offer: Big stories, small price. Keep independent media alive. Become a Scroll member today!
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!