CBI Chief's comment reflects UPA's desperation to malign Modi and Amit Shah

Commenting on Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Chief Ranjit Sinha's statement on former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Kirti Azad on Saturday said that Sinha's statement reflected the desperation of the United Province Alliance's (UPA) desperation to malign Modi and Amit Shah.

"For the first time the CBI has said the right thing that the UPA was after Modi and Shah, and that they would have been happy if they were charged in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case," said Azad.

"This shows the way in which UPA makes its own predictions and draws its own conclusions," he said.

BJP Spokesperson Vijay Roopani said that the CBI was saying this as they also knew that the Congress was going to take the backseat very soon.

"The CBI also knows that Congress is going to be on the backseat very soon and it wants to protect itself from the Congress' planning," said Roopani.

"Now they do not want to work under any pressure and are breaking away from Congress," he said.

Sinha had said that there were political expectations for the conviction of Modi and Shah in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, and that UPA government would have been very happy if such a thing had happened.

The CBI on Thursday filed a supplementary chargesheet in the alleged Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case.

Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter allegedly with Gujarat Police on the city outskirts on June 15, 2004.

Police had then claimed the four were terrorists on a mission to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. However, according to the CBI 's charge sheet filed in July, the encounter, a joint operation by Gujarat Police and Intelligence Bureau, was stage-managed.

Seven Gujarat policemen, including Pandey, have been named as accused and charged with murder and criminal conspiracy, among others.