BJP welcomes SC's order on Amit Shah

"We welcome the Supreme Court order. We firmly believe that Amit Shah is innocent," BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar told reporters on the sidelines of the BJP National Executive meeting here.

He said the BJP was glad that Shah could now visit Gujarat and campaign in the upcoming state Assembly elections.

Shah, who reached the venue of the meeting, said he had been maintaining from the very beginning that the case against him was politically motivated.

"We have cleared one more hurdle today and in the coming days it will be proved that this case was politically motivated and I am totally innocent," Shah, a former Minister of State for Home in the Gujarat government, said.

The Supreme Court rejected CBI's plea to cancel the bail granted to Shah in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case and agreed to transfer the trial from Gujarat to Mumbai.

The court also permitted Shah to enter and travel in Gujarat in view of the upcoming Assembly elections.

CBI had approached the apex court against the bail granted to Shah by the Gujarat High Court in the case of fake encounter killing of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh and for shifting the trial of the case to a place outside Gujarat.

Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi were allegedly abducted by Gujarat's Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) from Hyderabad and killed in an encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005.