A day after Rajasthan BJP leader Gulab Chand Kataria was slapped with murder and conspiracy charges in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, the principal Opposition party said it would rake up in Parliament the issue of the Congress-led UPA Government “misusing the CBI”.
“The CBI has been misused to target our leaders, first in Gujarat and now in Rajasthan. The party condemns this Congress behaviour and the party is committed to fighting this tendency both politically and legally. We will raise the issue in a big way in the coming Parliament session,” BJP president Rajnath Singh told Express on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, the BJP organised a press briefing, addressed by Rajnath along with Arun Jaitley and Rajasthan BJP president Vasundhara Raje, to reject all charges made by the CBI in its supplementary chargesheet against Kataria, a former Rajasthan home minister who is now the Opposition leader in the Assembly. “The CBI chargesheet against Kataria is without any basis. He is known for his propriety and credibility. There is not even a shred of truthful evidence against him. The case is being pursued by the CBI with the intention of implicating senior BJP leaders at the behest of the Congress,” the leaders alleged. They said the party would stand by its leaders including Kataria.
They further said that “when former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah was targeted by the CBI in the fake encounter case, the real aim was Chief Minister Narendra Modi”.
“The country will have to think of about the the honesty and professionalism of the CBI, given the way the agency has been conducting itself. The Congress can keep misusing the CBI, but our leadership will not run scared. The Congress will have to face the consequences in the elections,” Jaitley said. He said the chargesheeting of Kataria is the third instance of the CBI trying to “implicate” a BJP leader, after Gujarat minister Shah and Raje confidant Rajendra Rathore. “In Rathore’s case, the court said charges could not be framed. The AG then said more evidence should be collected and only then it could be thought whether he should be considered as an accused,” he said.