Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on Wednesday refuted the Bharatiya Janata Party's allegations that the UPA Government at the Centre is misusing CBI to defame its leaders.
"The BJP has this feeling because the charges filed by the CBI are against their party members. The government is in no way involved in these matters and there is no political agenda behind the chargesheets filed," he told the media here.
The BJP earlier in the day charged the ruling UPA-II regime with hounding former Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria in connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.
Claiming that it was a conspiracy by the ruling UPA and not based on facts, BJP president Rajnath Singh said: "I believe that it is a planned conspiracy by the Congress led UPA government to malign the image of popular Bharatiya Janata Party leaders. I would like to say on behalf of BJP that we will fight this battle politically as well as legally and our party will strongly support all the people against whom this charge sheet had been filed."
The BJP leaders denounced the investigations of CBI as shoddy in recent scams that shook the nation.
Kataria is the second high profile politician to be named in the alleged fake encounter case after former Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah, considered close to Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Besides Kataria, the others summoned by a Mumbai court include Andhra Pradesh Indian Police Service officer N Balasubramaniam, police inspector Shrinivas Rao, and R K Marbles director Vimal Patni.
On September 27 last year, the Supreme Court had ordered the sensitive case to be transferred to Maharashtra after the CBI said that witnesses were being threatened and the trial could not be conducted in a free and fair manner in Gujarat.
According to the CBI, Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi were allegedly kidnapped by Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad from Hyderabad and killed in a "gunfight" near Gandhinagar in November 2005.
A year later, Tulsiram Prajapati, a prime witness to the incident, was allegedly killed in another staged gunfight in Chapri village of Gujarat"s Banaskantha district.
