Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's most trusted and senior lieutenant, Amit Shah, has been accused by Ottawa of authorizing attacks against Canadian Sikh separatists on Canadian soil.
New Delhi on Saturday defended Shah, who oversees the country's internal security forces as interior minister, calling the allegations “absurd and baseless.”
Shah, 60, is often considered the second most powerful person in India after Modi, whom he has served loyally for decades, and enjoys a fearsome reputation, including accusations that he orchestrated a series of murders.
Their enduring partnership cemented the Hindu nationalist worldview of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Modiis is seen as the charismatic leader mobilizing the masses behind the BJP, while Shah is seen as the enforcer who keeps his subordinates in line.
“The party is now completely dominated by Narendra Modi – and of course also by Amit Shah… who has been his right-hand man for more than 20 years,” political scientist and Indian expert Christophe Jaffrelot declared in 2024.
Both men began their political careers in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the western state of Gujarat, where Modi took Shah – 14 years his junior – under his wing.
Modi was Gujarat's chief minister and Shah was a young lawmaker when in 2002 the state was rocked by some of the worst religious violence in independent India's history.
A fire in a train carriage that killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims sparked reprisals that killed at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.
Modi was accused of helping to stir up the unrest and failing to order police action – which he denies – and the fallout saw him banned from entering the US and Britain for years.
But the BJP won the Gujarat elections that year with a landslide. Modi appointed Shah to the state's powerful home ministry.
– Murder and exile –
The following year was the beginning of a political storm that threatened to end Shah's career.
Haren Pandya, one of Shah's predecessors in the Home Ministry and a staunch critic of Modi's conduct during the 2002 riots, was shot dead during a morning walk in Ahmedabad.
The case was never officially solved, but suspicion fell on gangsters Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati, both of whom were killed by police in unclear circumstances.
Critics claimed, but never proved, that Shah ordered police to murder the two men.
Shah has denied the allegations, saying they were concocted by political rivals to discredit him.
He was nevertheless arrested for the murder of the trio in 2010, forcing him to relinquish his ministerial duties, and spent three months in jail before being released on bail by Gujarat's top court.
Shah was banned from entering Gujarat for the next two years, prompting Indian media to dub him the “fugitive”.
All charges against Shah were dropped, months after Modi became prime minister in 2014.
– “Man of the match” –
Shah made good use of his exile, settling in New Delhi, the Indian capital, paving the way for Modi's political rise.
By the time Modi was announced as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections, Shah had built a reputation as a masterful political strategist.
He was put in charge of the party's campaign in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state with a population larger than Brazil's, where a near victory in the polls sealed Modi's victory.
Modi later called Shah “man of the match” in the election.
He made him president of the BJP, subsequently facilitating his entry into the national parliament and appointing him again as interior minister.
Shah was born in 1964 into a successful business family in the financial hub of Mumbai, but moved to Ahmedabad where he studied chemistry.
He flirted with careers in banking and the stock market, but found his true calling in politics, just as his future mentor Modi had done in the same city years earlier.
Shah married Sonal Shah in his early 20s and the couple had a son, Jay.
Jay Shah was appointed secretary of the Indian Cricket Board at just 31 in 2019, a rapid rise to lead the country's most popular sport that sparked accusations of nepotism.
He was elected unopposed to head cricket's world governing body five years later, a reflection of both India's outsized influence in the sport and his reputation as an administrator.
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