Ahmedabad, July 20: The sleaze CD that felled senior BJP leader Sanjay Joshi was fake, a Gujarat police officer suspended in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case has allegedly told the CBI.

Balkrishna Chaubey, the suspended Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) inspector, has revealed that he had himself distributed copies of the CD at the BJP’s Mumbai convention in 2005, sources said.

The CBI is to file a chargesheet in the Sohrabuddin case on July 26. In its report, the bureau is likely to link the killing with the sleaze CD and argue that the encounter was part of a “larger conspiracy” to eliminate evidence in the sex scandal case, the sources said.

Joshi, an RSS pracharak sworn to celibacy, had to resign as BJP general secretary after the CD purportedly showed him having sex with a woman. The CD was distributed ahead of the party’s silver jubilee celebrations in December 2005. He has been in political hibernation since.

Chaubey, the suspended inspector, is alleged to have told CBI officers investigating the Sohrabuddin case that the sleaze CD was prepared in Gujarat and that his boss, ATS chief D.G. Vanzara, had given him copies to distribute at the convention. He, along with others, had gone to Mumbai for this purpose.

The timing of this revelation could not be worse for Narendra Modi, whose government is facing the heat in the Sohrabuddin case. Five IPS officers have been arrested and the minister of state for home, Amit Shah, also faces the threat of arrest.

Source close to Joshi, a known opponent of Modi and L.K. Advani, said the CD was prepared by his political rivals in Gujarat in co-ordination with other top BJP leaders and RSS functionaries to settle scores with him.

An anonymous letter circulated among Gujarat legislators in 2005 said that a former official in the chief minister’s office was involved in the making of the CD. The official is now believed to have settled in the US .

A report by the Hyderabad forensic laboratory had labelled the CD fake and called it “digital manipulation” but Joshi was not reinstated.

Former state home minister Gordhan Zadaphia said Joshi had lodged an FIR in Bhopal, from where copies of the CD were allegedly couriered to 35 top BJP leaders, but the police never investigated .

Zadaphia, who quit the BJP following irreconcilable differences with the chief minister, said he would demand a probe into the CD scandal once the CBI files its chargesheet. “It is a serious matter because certain party functionaries are involved in the character assassination of their own leader.”

The Gujarat Congress spokesperson, Arjun Modhwadia, also said his party would press for a probe by a central agency.

But a senior BJP leader was dismissive, saying the CBI is trying to mislead the people by “unnecessarily” linking the CD scandal to the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case.

“If Sanjay Joshi was really innocent, the party would have rehabilitated him ,” he said.