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Sohrabuddin Case
Amit Shah gets bail

Ahmedabad, October 29
In a relief to former minister Amit Shah, the Gujarat High Court today granted him bail more than three months after he was arrested by the CBI in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.

Justice RH Shukla granted bail to 46-year-old Shah on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh and a condition that he would have to appear before the CBI's Mumbai office every month as the case was registered there.

Shah, a close aide of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, was arrested by the CBI on July 25 and he has spend over three months in the Sabarmati jail here.

The court also rejected the demand of the CBI to grant three weeks stay on the bail order as the agency would like to appeal against the verdict.

Shah has been described by the CBI as the “kingpin” of the conspiracy leading to the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in November 2005 and killing of two key witnesses - Soharabuddin’s wife Kausar Bi and his close aide Tulsiram Prajapati. Welcoming the order, Gujarat BJP spokesperson Vijay Rupani said the party would fight in both “the people’s court and the law courts” in Shah’s case.

Accusing the CBI and the Congress of levelling “false” allegations in the case, he said: “We have got justice in both in the law court and the people’s court in the battle that we are fighting.”

Reacting to the verdict, Union Textiles Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela said it was a judicial matter and hoped that the CBI would go in appeal to the Supreme Court. “Let Amit Shah enjoy Diwali with his family. The charges are so solid there is no way out,” Vaghela said. — PTI