Centre, CBI has conspired against me: Amit Shah

In a three-page affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, he said this was clear from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that the Bharatiya Janata Party was blackmailing the government on reforms in goods and services tax by linking it to the case against Shah.

"There is a conspiracy hatched by the central government, which is clear from the statement made by the prime minister in the press conference on February 15, which supports the case of Shah that the conspiracy has been hatched by the central government," the former minister said in his affidavit.

Shah said the Centre and the Central Bureau of Investigation were biased against him.

Shah had earlier asked the Supreme Court to recall its order for a CBI probe on the grounds of 'bias', levelling allegations of conspiracy against its judge and the Centre. Shah, a close aide of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, alleged that Justice Tarun Chatterjee (since retired) who as part of the bench ordered the CBI probe in the case on January 12, was under the scanner of the investigating agency in the Uttar Pradesh Provident Fund Scam for 'breach of trust'.

He contended that the entire exercise was the result of a "political conspiracy to launch an unconstitutional assault on the constitutionally formed and democratically elected Gujarat government". Shah, a former minister of state for home, is currently in judicial custody in Ahmedabad.

Another affidavit was filed in which Shah alleged that the entire investigation against him was carried out on a wrong assumption and was politically motivated.

The former minister also accused the CBI of coercing witnesses to depose in a particular manner. Shah, 46, questioned why the Supreme Court had on January 12 insisted that CBI alone should probe the Sohrabuddin case, in direct contradiction to its earlier stand in post-Godhra riots cases, when it refused to involve the agency and instead opted to form a special investigative body.

Sohrabuddin, Kauser Bi and another person, suspected to be Prajapati, were picked up during a joint operation by police teams from Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh from a bus while they were on their way from Hyderabad to Sangli in Maharashtra on November 22, 2005. Sohrabuddin was gunned down in an encounter by the Gujarat police's Anti-Terrorist Squad.

The policemen are also accused of killing Kauser Bi and Prajapati to destroy evidence. The investigation in the case by CBI had stirred a political controversy after Shah was arrested and charged with murder.

He is now in judicial custody in Sabarmati Jail in Ahmedabad. Shah had resigned from Modi government after the CBI filed a chargesheet against him in the case.