Bombay High Court on Friday dismissed a public interest petition against the CBI’s decision not to challenge a 2014 trial court order discharging BJP chief Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh encounter case.

“We are not inclined to grant any relief... especially when the petitioner (Bombay Lawyers Association) is a body which has no locus in the case,” the division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre said.

Shah had been discharged in December 2014 by a new trial judge days after his predecessor, B.H. Loya, died while on an out-of-town trip to attend a wedding. Last April, the Supreme Court had dismissed a batch of petitions seeking a fresh probe into Loya’s death, ruling there was no foul play.

Gujarat police had killed alleged gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh and his wife Kausar Bi in a purported fake encounter in 2005, when Shah was the state’s home minister. Shaikh’s partner Tulsi Prajapati was killed in another alleged fake encounter in 2006 by the police of Gujarat and Rajasthan.

The trial court and Bombay High Court had discharged 16 of the 38 people the CBI had accused in the case. These 16 included Shah and all the senior police officers from the two states.

According to Bombay Lawyers Association counsel Dushyant Dave, the CBI had changed its stand on Shah after the change of government at the Centre in May 2014.

He said the CBI had opposed the discharge plea Shah had moved before the trial court in April 2014.

“They had called him (Shah) one of the main conspirators in the case at that time. However, in December 2014, Shah was granted a discharge and the CBI changed its stand on his role,” Dave said.

“That is because the general election took place and the government at the Centre changed. But isn’t the CBI supposed to be impartial irrespective of who is in power at the Centre?”

Dave added: “Why did it (the CBI) then challenge the discharge granted to police officers N.K. Amin and Dalpat Singh Rathod, but go quiet in Shah’s case?”

The CBI said its decision was “conscious and reasonable” and sought dismissal of the petition, terming it “politically motivated” and a “publicity stunt”.

Additional solicitor-general Anil Singh, who appeared for the CBI, said the agency had studied the trial court order and the subsequent rulings by appellate courts upholding Shah’s discharge and decided it “did not require any judicial review”.

Singh said there was no law that compelled the CBI to appeal against, or seek a review of, every discharge.