Sohrabuddin case: Modi aide Amit Shah appears before court

The Supreme Court had on September 27 ordered the transfer of Sheikh encounter case to Maharashtra after the CBI said witnesses were being intimidated and the trial could not be held in a free and fair manner in Gujarat.

Shah was the minister of state for Home in Modi Cabinet before he stepped down after his name surfaced in the staged encounter killing. Shah won recently conducted Assembly election in Gujarat, results for which were announced yesterday, from Naranpura seat.

He appeared in the court of the metropolitan magistrate here. Later in the evening, the court adjourned the proceedings to next month.

Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi were allegedly abducted by Gujarat's Anti-Terrorism Squad from Hyderabad and killed in a fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005. While Tulsiram Prajapati, a key witness to the encounter, was allegedly killed by police at Chapri village in Banaskantha district in December 2006.

The CBI had alleged that Shah was the "kingpin" of the conspiracy in the encounter episode in which most of the accused are policemen, some of them IPS officers. He was arrested in July 2010 but released on bail after spending three months in jail.

Shah, the close confidante of chief minister Narendra Modi, is currently out on bail after Supreme Court rejected the CBI's plea to cancel the relief granted to him in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.

He returned to Gujarat after a gap of two years, following the Supreme Court judgement allowing him to enter the state.