Amit Shah’s encounter threat to riot victim

Zahid Hussain Kadri’s name figures in the CBI’s list of 248 prosecution witnesses in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and his wife Kausarbi’s murder, but he has nothing to do with either of the cases.

Yet, this Gujarat riots victim’s two page statement to the CBI against Amit Shah could turn the tables on the former home minister.

Kadri, listed as prosecution witness number 193 against Shah, has claimed in his statement that the former Gujarat home minister had threatened to eliminate him like Sohrabuddin in a fake encounter.

He had lost his 21- year- old son, Farhan, during the Gujarat riots in police firing.

When the police refused to register an FIR, Kadri approached the metropolitan magistrate with a criminal complaint in 2002 against the Gujarat Police and subsequently moved the high court in 2005.

“Investigations have revealed that Amit Shah also used the Sohrabuddin encounter for threatening Zahid Kadri to withdraw the petition filed against the police in the metropolitan magistrate’s court and a subsequent writ petition filed in the Gujarat High Court.

Kadri was threatened that he may be killed in an encounter in a manner similar to that of Sohrabuddin,” the 2000- page CBI chargesheet in the Sohrabuddin case, states.

In his statement to the CBI, Kadri states that Shah was not happy with the fact that he was pursuing his son’s death at the hands of policemen vigorously in the court against the Gujarat Police and had even put a damning writ petition in the high court accusing the state government of deliberately delaying the case.

In his writ petition filed in the high court in 2005, Kadri said he was apprehensive that the summons issued by the metropolitan magistrate’s court were not being served upon the accused Gujarat policemen for over three years merely because all the accused were policemen.

“My complaint before the metropolitan magistrate in 2002 is still at the inquiry stage and is being adjourned from time to time. The summons to the accused police personnel have not been served to date. My son was eliminated during the Gujarat riots in 2002 by the protectors of life — the Gujarat Police,” Kadri stated in his HC petition.

“The summons to the accused can be easily served considering the fact that the accused are government servants and are still serving in the police department.

The magistrate has not even examined the eye- witnesses. It appears that the state machinery wanted to prolong the trial and thereafter plead for dropping the proceedings merely on the grounds of delay,” Kadri’s stated in his 2005 petition filed at the Gujarat High Court.

After Sohrabuddin’s fake encounter in November 2005, Shah threatened to eliminate Kadri in a similar way by naming him as Sohrabuddin’s accomplice.

Shah had traced a tenuous connection with Sohrabuddin to implicate the 62- year- old Kadri as an accomplice.

It turned out that Sohrabuddin had lived for a few years around 1999 in a house next to Kadri’s in Razulla Bagh Society in Ahmedabad. Shah had also pressured Kadri to testify against Sohrabuddin.