Ahmedabad, Aug. 11: A Gujarat police officer who apparently helped the CBI nail Amit Shah has himself been booked in a fake encounter case which the state government has reopened 25 years after it was closed, in a move many see as “vindictive”.

Additional director-general Kuldeep Sharma, the senior-most IPS officer in Gujarat after state police chief S.S. Khandwawala, was booked by the CID yesterday in the killing of four smugglers in 1984 in Kutch district where he was then superintendent of police.

The move to revive the case, closed in 1985 for lack of evidence after the dead smugglers’ families alleged a fake encounter, has set off speculation in official circles.

“The re-opening of a 26-year-old case smacks of vindictiveness,” a retired director-general of police said.

Sources said Sharma had always been a thorn in the flesh for former junior home minister Shah, who has been arrested in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and whose bail plea was today deferred till August 17.

One key lead that helped the CBI nail Shah was a video recorded by two witnesses that purportedly show one of Shah’s aides, deputy commissioner of police Abhay Chudasama, warning them not to make revelations before the agency. Sources said the hidden camera was Sharma’s brainchild.

Sharma had first angered Shah in 2004 by refusing to arrest dancer Mallika Sarabhai, who had criticised the Narendra Modi government over the 2002 pogrom, sources said. A case had been filed against Sarabhai after one of her students accused the dancer of cheating her and 12 others after promising to help them emigrate to the US.

The sources said Sharma told Shah there was no substance to the charges. The case was dropped in December 2004 for lack of evidence.

In August 2005, Sharma, then additional director-general in the CID, had written to chief secretary Sudhir Mankad that Shah had accepted a bribe of Rs 2.5 crore to help procure bail for Ketan Parekh, main accused in the Rs 1, 600-crore fraud in the Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank in 2001. Sharma had sought permission to prosecute Shah, which he never got.

Instead, the 1976-batch IPS officer was summarily removed from his post when the CID arrested one of Shah’s closest aides, Kamlesh Tripathi, on extortion charges. Tripathi, now wanted by the CBI, got out on bail and was never charge-sheeted in the extortion case.

A few weeks ago, Sharma applied for a transfer to the central government on assignment but was refused. Instead, he was appointed managing director of Sheep and Wool Development Corporation, a post usually occupied by a junior IAS officer.

The case against Sharma is based on a complaint to the state police chief in February by Jusab Juma Mokha of Kutch, apparently a family member of one of the slain smugglers. Mokha repeated the 26-year-old charge of fake encounter and said Sharma and other officers had threatened the family after the encounter and taken away jewellery. “A special CID team will probe the case,” the DGP said.