Ahmedabad: Gujarat High Court on Friday reserved its order on a petition seeking contempt of court proceedings against BJP leader Arun Jaitley for his criticism of UPA government on alleged misuse of CBI in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case on his blog. Advocate Mukul Sinha has filed the petition.
Citing the Contempt of Courts Act, Sinha argued before the division bench of Justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari that Jaitley's writing "interfered with the administration of justice". Jaitley had written that in most Gujarat-related cases, CBI was being guided by a disgruntled group of state policemen, accused of indiscipline by the state government. Sinha said this was tantamount to ridiculing the Gujarat High Court, which was monitoring the probe by CBI in Ishrat case.
"Disgruntled group of state policemen" was an indirect reference to IPS offier Satish Verma, who had been asked by the High Court to assist the CBI in the case, Sinha argued. Jaitley's piece put enormous political pressure on the CBI, following which it dropped names of several persons from the first chargesheet filed before the Special CBI court here on July 3, advocate Sinha claimed.
"CBI buckled under pressure and did not name certain persons as accused in the Ishrat Jahan case," said Sinha, who is representing Gopinath Pillai, father of Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, who was one of the three men killed in the alleged fake encounter alongwith Jahan.
Jaitley had also said that Intelligence Bureau - whose officials have come under cloud in CBI probe - was paying the price for `Modi-phobia' and "only Pakistan and LeT would have the last laugh". CBI's chargesheet names seven senior state police officers, but not any of the IB officials.
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