“Rarely one would have met such a fate. God would never have bestowed such good fortune on anyone in this world. But I had it,” said Union Home Minister Amit Shah referring to his imprisonment in 2010 in fake encounter case.
“Congress filed a case against me through CBI and threw me in jail. Obviously, it was a tough time for me. I was the minister of jails five minutes ago and five minutes later, I was one of the prisoners in a jail,” Shah said.
Without naming the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Saturday that the Congress, “through CBI”, lodged a case against him and “threw” him in jail and then credited former party general secretary Nirupam Nanavaty, a leading lawyer, of taking up his case “and winning it in the Supreme Court”.
Addressing a gathering after releasing Shree Divyakant Nanavaty: Bhulay te Pahela – a memoir on former Gujarat law minister Divyakant Nanavaty at Rupayatan, an NGO in Junagadh, Shah recalled how, within minutes, he became one of the prisoners in a jail that he was supervising as minister of state (Home) in the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat in 2010.
“Rarely one would have met such a fate. God would never have bestowed such good fortune on anyone in this world. But I had it,” he added.
Shah said that after his arrest, “some lawyer friends were discussing names of Gujarat’s good lawyers who knew criminal law”.
“Naturally, Nirupambhai’s name figured in the discussion. But two-three of us, who were discussing this, thought that Nirupambhai has served as general secretary of Congress, has been a Congress leader and also has a Congress background. Would he fight this case (of mine)?
"Everyone responded negatively. My mind also said that he won’t. But then, I thought, what is the harm in inquiring? I thought I should ask him. Hence, a friend talked to him on my behalf and to our surprise, Nirupambhai agreed to fight the case… Not only did he agree to fight but he fought the case and helped win it in the Supreme Court,” he said.
Amit Shah was arrested by the CBI in July 2010 in the alleged fake encounter of ‘gangster’ Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Shah, who had stepped down as MoS Home in the Gujarat government led by Narendra Modi a couple of days before his arrest, was charged with murder in the case.
Praising the senior advocate, Shah said the only reason Nirupam agreed to fight his case was because, being a Congressman, Nirupam knew that he had been wrongly implicated in the case. “I am forgetting the name of the Delhi hotel where we were dining and I asked for the reason and he said, ‘I know that my friends in Congress have entrapped you… this is the reason I am fighting the case’,” Shah said as Nirupam, who was seated on the dais with him, looked on.
“There can be no bigger example of professionalism than this,” said Shah, who is on a two-day tour of his home state of Gujarat.
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