MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Friday rejected a public interest litigation challenging BJP president Amit Shah's discharge in Sohrabuddin Shaikh fake encounter case.
The division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Bharati Dangre rejected the petition on the grounds of locus and the delay in filing the case, said Adv Ahmed Abdi of the Bombay Lawyers' association (BLA) that had filed the petition.
"We are dismissing the petition. We are not inclined to grant any relief, especially when the petitioner is a body which has no locus in the case," the court said in its judgement.
We shall now adopt the route of a special leave petition, Abdi said.
The CBI had opposed the petition in September while saying that, "the petition is a publicity litigation and not a public interest litigation".
The petition had termed the CBI's decision not to challenge Shah's discharge in the case as "illegal, arbitrary and mala fide".
While the petitioners had contended that the CBI had changed its stand on Shah after the Modi government came to power in 2014, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, appearing for the CBI, said there was no law that makes it compulsory for the agency to file appeals or revision applications for every discharge.
The special CBI court discharged Shah in the case in 2014. Sohrabuddin Shaikh and his wife Kausar Bi were killed in an alleged fake encounter in 2005 by the Gujarat Police.