Ahmedabad, Aug. 1: The first investigating officer in the Sohrabuddin case has allegedly told the CBI he was offered a Rs 35-lakh bribe and a promotion to change his report that had thrown suspicion on top Gujarat police officers.

According to CBI sources, V.K. Solanki has alleged the bribe offer came in 2007 from men sent by then junior Gujarat home minister Amit Shah, now arrested and charged with ordering Sohrabuddin’s murder by police.

Solanki’s purported version also throws suspicion on the role played by then state CID inspector-general Geeta Johri, who was first lauded for helping nail top officers but later lost some sheen when an allegedly watered-down chargesheet was presented.

Solanki purportedly claims that Johri, who headed the probe intermittently, asked him to alter his report saying Shah was livid that a mere police inspector had “dared” to finger top officers.

He was allegedly offered promotion as deputy superintendent and a posting of his choice but says he refused. Solanki, who retired as an inspector six months ago, never received the promotion even though, he says, it was due to him anyway.

This is Solanki’s version, according to the CBI sources:

Johri told Solanki that at a meeting called by Shah in his office, attended by then director-general of police P.C. Pande and then additional director-general G.C. Raigar, the minister had asked her to tear off the inquiry report.

Solanki refused Johri’s instructions to alter the report — prepared after the preliminary inquiry — but the final report and the chargesheet were later watered down anyway.

One hole in the final report was that it sought to de-link from the case the murder of Tulsiram Prajapati, the lone witness to Gujarat police’s kidnapping of Sohrabuddin and wife Kausar Bi. The report passed off Prajapati, a Sohrabuddin aide, as Kalimuddin.

Solanki says that on December 13, 2006, he wrote to his superiors seeking permission to question Prajapati in the Rajasthan jail where he was lodged. The next day, the then CID chief, .P. Mathur, denied permission.

On December 15, the then deputy inspector-general of the state anti-terrorism squad, D.G. Vanzara, was transferred as deputy inspector-general, border range. On December 28, Prajapati was killed in Gujarat’s border district of Banaskantha. Vanzara has been chargesheeted in both fake encounters.

Johri was in charge of the preliminary inquiry into the Sohrabuddin case and Solanki was the investigating officer.

The report, apparently prepared by Solanki, cited discrepancies in the version of the alleged encounter provided by Vanzara.

Johri was left out of the final investigations but Solanki was part of it. Later, the state government put Johri back in charge of the case after the Supreme Court asked why she had been removed. By then, three IPS officers — Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiyan and Rajasthan cop Dinesh M.N. —had been arrested.

Later, the apparently weak chargesheet was filed. The top court handed the case to the CBI in January this year.