In this article we prove that a certain class of { \it smooth} Sasakian manifolds admits lifts to 4-dimensional quasi-Einstein shearfree spacetimes of Petrov type II or D. This is related to an analogous result by Hill, Lewandowski and Nurowski \cite{ HLN} for general { \it real-analytic} CR manifolds. In particular, this holds for all tubular CR manifolds. Furthermore, we show that any Sasakian manifold with underlying K\"ahler-Einstein manifold with non-zero Einstein constant has a lift to a shearfree Einstein metric of Petrov type II or D.
Categories: math.DG math.CV