Ahmedabad:
Senior BJP leader LK Advani has met the former Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah who is in Sabarmati Jail for his role in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
Advani, along with state BJP in-charge Balbir Punj, went to Sabarmati jail and met Shah. The two leaders later went to Shah's residence in Naranpura area to meet his family members.
"The Centre is using CBI as a tool to defame our government which is absolutely incorrect. People will give them a reply. The results of yesterday's bye-election is not ordinary," Advani said after meeting Shah's family members.
The meeting is being seen as Advani's signal that the BJP is very much with the minister. After Amit Shah's arrest, the party had said that the former Gujarat MoS for Home was falsely implicated in the Sohrabuddin case.
Party sources have said this is a courtesy call by the BJP to Amit Shah.
Advani is the second BJP leader to meet Shah in prison. Arun Jaitley had paid him a visit on September 11 to see how the former minister is doing in the jail.
Shah, a close aide of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, allegedly conspired in November 2005 with some of the state's senior-most policemen to kill Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a young Muslim man, and his wife, Kauser Bi. At the time, the police claimed that Sohrabuddin was a terrorist from the Laskhar-e-Toiba and was en route to assassinate the Chief Minister.
(Read: Who is Amit Shah)Till the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case came back to haunt him, Shah has only risen, not least because of his mentor, Narendra Modi, whose second-in-command he has been for some time now. Before the CBI net started closing in on Shah this year, he was even considered an option for Chief Minister if Narendra Modi had to move to national politics.
(Read: Congress slams Advani for visiting Amit Shah in jail)With PTI inputs.