Amit Shah verdict was expected
The inevitable has finally happened. The CBI court in Mumbai has discharged Amit Shah from Sohrabuddin-Tulsi Prajapati fake encounter case for lack of evidence. In short, the fake encounter case was thrown out for lack of genuine evidence. With the case unravelling this way, discharge of all the accused officers of Gujarat and Rajasthan Police will follow.
The mainstream media has learnt to its bitter disappointment that all the vapour solidified in their studios and newsrooms has vanished when put in the open without the crucial ice support provided by the government of the day. The end of the UPA-mainstream media jugalbandi has put paid to their greatest triumph. The Modi government has refused to provide the ice and allowed the court to see the vapour for what it is.
To give another simile, it was a structurally unsound building, which could stand only with permanent and heavy scaffolding provided in the form of government backing. The scaffolding was taken off and the building could not stand on its own. It exposed the poor masonry and design faults.
Everything about the case was weird from the word go. From initial reports, it looked like a routine encounter killing of a big time criminal by the police. Sohrabuddin was a dreaded extortionist in Rajasthan who took crores as protection from marble traders in Rajasthan, too scared to testify against him. He was always acquitted for lack of evidence. Tulsiram Prajapati was a professional killer and his associate.
Their encounters could have been like several which happen every year. But this particular encounter had the potential to block Modi's political advance and possibly land him in jail for long time. So it took a life of its own, with designs tailor-made to fabricate the case, not grounded in reality but a designed reality. UPA as well as Modi’s opponents in BJP had a big stake in the case. The police officers involved in the encounter were close to then Gujarat home minister Amit Shah. If they got the officers’ subordinates to implicate them then trail could lead to Amit Shah and finally to Modi himself.
So a ready-to-write investigative story was delivered to an anti-Modi reporter working for a leading Gujarati daily. As planned, this was picked up by other publications and TV channels. Within a fortnight right atmosphere was built up.
Normally, when a criminal dies in an encounter, his family’s initial response is fear that they too may be bumped off. But in this case Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabbudin filed a police complaint. He could do this because there were powerful forces backing him for their own ends. Finally when Amit Shah was arrested, there were wild celebrations among the mainstream media and UPA. I recall a journalist holding forth on how Modi too would be in jail within a month. Reason? Shah had talked on the mobile with the accused officers so he was part of the encounter. Modi talked with Shah on mobile. So Modi too was involved in the encounter QED. It was for the fools to claim it was normal for a home minister to talk on mobile with his senior officers and for CM to talk with his home minister.
The gotcha moment did not come. But they kept on plugging their line. So Sohrabbudin was humanised by suppressing his criminal background and romanticised with him pictured with his alleged wife Kaushar Bi against the background of Taj Mahal.
The pathos was enhanced with how Kaushar Bi was allegedly killed and burnt to ashes by the accused police officials. A local TV channel revealed how the firing by Sohrabbudin on the office of Popular Builders was at the behest of a lender who had given supari to Sohrabuddin for recovering his money from the builder. Instead of following up this line they gave a new spin that Sohrabuddin was a hit man for the extortion gang run by the accused police officials. After his arrest Amit Shah too was painted as the chief of the extortion gang.
India TV dug into the background of Kausar Bi. According to the channel, which tracked her poverty stricken husband and children, she had walked out of her home and was a companion to Sohrabudin and not his wife. But again MSM did not follow up on this information because that would have ruined the emotional pitch of the case. Instead a sinister spin was given that the accused police officers raped her before murdering her.
The last ditch effort of the maintsream media-UPA was to get Shah and Modi through the Ishrat Jahan encounter case where CBI targeted Rajinder Kumar, additional director Central IB, so that he could implicate Amit Shah and Modi. That too failed.
The final desperate case was the police shadowing of a young woman architect from Kutch with media reports making naughty attributions to Modi until her father put paid to it all by formally stating that the monitoring was undertaken at their request.
With BJP achieving a resounding victory in the Lok Sabha polls and Modi taking over as PM, all the stake holders in the conspiracy have dispersed. The mainstream media reaction to the Amit Shah discharge is more wailing of the helpless than the roar of angry lions.
All the leading conspirators will make their individual peace deals with the victors and family of Sohrabudin will feel that they are on their own now. May be Muslim organisations will not give up on them.