Narendra Modi at the 55th meeting of National Development Council in New Delhi on Saturday. (PTI)

Ahmedabad, July 24: The CBI nailed Amit Shah by sending two decoy witnesses, armed with hidden cameras, to his aides who tried to intimidate them, the agency’s chargesheet says.

It claims that Gujarat police killed Sohrabuddin Sheikh because he was harassing Rajasthan’s powerful marble traders, some of whom have connections within the BJP, with extortion demands.

The chargesheet, filed yesterday, names Shah as “the main conspirator in the fake encounter case”. It cites the depositions of 184 people to allege that Shah ran an extortion ring in Gujarat with his handpicked police officers and “was using (the) Udaipur-based Sohrabuddin to run an extortion racket” in Rajasthan too.

It was Shah who ordered officers close to him to kidnap and murder Sohrabuddin as well as the witnesses — his wife Kauser Bi and gang member Tulsi Prajapati — the chargesheet says.

It names Shah and his two aides who allegedly tried to intimidate the decoy witnesses as the “three new accused” in the case (other than the arrested police officers). The alleged aides are Ajay Patel and Yashpal Chudasama, chairman and director, respectively, of the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank. Like Shah, they have gone into hiding.

The decoys

This is how the CBI says it snared Shah:

Raman Patel and Dashrat Patel, owners of construction company Popular Builders, had told the CBI that Shah was trying to “threaten or influence witnesses”. Prior to killing Sohrabuddin, the Gujarat police had stage-managed a shootout at the office of Popular Builder so they could lodge an FIR against the gangster.

Ajay Patel had allegedly told Raman and Dashrat that whatever they would say before the CBI would be provided to them by Ahmedabad deputy commissioner of police Abhay Chudasama.

The CBI got the two witnesses to discreetly video-graph their later meetings with Shah’s middlemen. “The transcription of these meetings revealed obstruction and influencing of the witnesses by Shah and Abhay Chudasama,” the chargesheet says.

“The audio-visual records indicate that Ajay Patel and Yashpal actively participated in the main conspiracy and the crime committed in furtherance to the conspiracy.”

The murder

Sohrabuddin, the chargesheet says, had set up a gang along with Prajapati to extort money from marble traders in Rajasthan. He killed his nearest rival, Hamid Lala, in 2002.

This is how the chargesheet reconstructs the events leading up to the fake encounter:

In 2004, Sohrabuddin called up the owners of RK Marbles and Sangram Textiles in Bhilwara and demanded huge sums of money. The two businessmen approached senior Rajasthan BJP politicians, who contacted Shah.

Shah entrusted the job of killing Sohrabuddin to anti-terrorism squad chief D.G. Vanzara, Abhay Chudasama and Rajkumar Pandian. Chudasama was Shah’s link to Sohrabuddin and Prajapati and knew the gangsters well.

Vanzara asked Shah how to go about the killing since there was no criminal case against Sohrabuddin in Gujarat. Shah told Vanzara this was his “headache”. The police then staged the shooting at Popular Builders.

Chudasama then contacted Prajapati and told him he must bring Sohrabuddin to Gujarat. Vanzara too met Prajapati and assured him that Sohrabuddin would be arrested but not killed. Prajapati then provided information about Sohrabuddin’s movements.

The police kidnapped Sohrabuddin from a bus and killed him on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in November 2005. Kauser Bi and Prajapati too were killed within days. All through this, Vanzara was in constant touch over the phone with Shah, continually seeking instructions.

The chargesheet says Chudasama had approached Sohrabuddin’s brother Rubabuddin, who had petitioned the Supreme Court to investigate his brother’s death, and offered him Rs 50 lakh to withdraw the case. When he refused, the CBI claims, Chudasama threatened to kill Rubabuddin like his brother.

Vanzara, Pandian and Abhay Chudasama are now in custody.