The BJP on Thursday demanded an apology from Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for a “political conspiracy” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah by using central probe agencies to investigate encounter cases in Gujarat.

BJP National Secretary Shrikant Sharma called the policemen accused of killing Ishrat Jahan and three others in the alleged fake encounter as “jaanbaz sipahi (brave soldiers)” whose only crime was that they had “gun[ned] down terrorists in an encounter”.

The Gujarat police had killed Jahan, along with Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar on June 15, 2004. On September 7, 2009, Metropolitan Magistrate SP Tamang submitted a 243-page report in the trial court terming the encounter fake and said the four had been killed in police custody the night before the ‘encounter’. Subsequently, on November 21, 2011, a Special Investigation Team constituted by the Gujarat High Court told the court that the encounter was not genuine. The High Court then ordered that a complaint under IPC Section 302 be filed against those involved. Altoget-her, 20 policemen, including IPS officers, were prosecuted.

The BJP demanded an apology from the Congress leaders for “defaming” policemen who were “only fighting against terrorism”. The party also accused Sonia and Rahul Gandhi of “conspiring” against Modi and Shah and using State agencies during the UPA’s ten-year tenure for “vendetta politics”.

“If you (Congress) have the slightest bit of shame, I can’t expect morality from you… But if you have the slightest bit of shame, then Sonia Gandhi and her loudmouth son Rahul, who only practices politics of conspiracy, who has become a lie-spouting machine, should apologise to the nation for dirty politics,” Sharma said.

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