Ahmedabad:
The Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI today questioned Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's close aide Amit Shah in connection with the Ishrat Jahan encounter case.
The investigating agency acted on the recent claims made by jailed IPS officer DG Vanzara that the Modi government in Gujarat was "inspiring, guiding and monitoring" every police action from "very close quarters."
The questioning came less than a week after sources in the CBI said the agency will soon declare that it has found no evidence of terrorist leanings of 19-year-old Ishrat Jehan, who was killed by the Gujarat police in 2004 along with three men.
In its first chargesheet presented in a Gujarat court in July, the CBI accused seven senior policemen of murdering Ishrat and her three male companions in "cold blood" and of planting an AK-56 at the scene of the shooting to portray the victims as terrorists.
One of those officers, DG Vanzara, who was then Deputy Commissioner of the Ahmedabad Crime Branch, wrote an explosive letter to Mr Modi from jail recently, alleging that Mr Shah, as Home Minister when Ishrat was killed, was aware of the police's actions.
The BJP has already alleged that the ruling Congress, unable to combat Mr Modi politically, is using the CBI to question his credentials and mar his reputation ahead of the general elections, due by May.