Gujarat riots victim Ahsan Jafri’s widow Zakia and two civil rights groups Thursday filed two separate applications seeking copies of the report that the special investigation team (SIT) investigating the alleged involvement of Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the violence submitted in a magisterial court here on Wednesday.
Metropolitan magistrate M S Bhatt issued notice to the SIT and posted the matter for hearing on February 13. The SIT’s report, filed to the court in a sealed cover, has been surmised to be a closure report, granting Modi relief.
Zakia has accused Modi and 62 others of having failed to discharge their duties during the riots, leading to the killings of innocent people. Her husband, Congress leader and former MP Ahsan Jafri, was killed in the Gulberg Society massacre of February 28, 2002.
Zakia filed her application today along with activist Teesta Setalvad — who was also a complainant — on the SIT’s alleged non-compliance with the Supreme Court order of September 12, 2011. The other application was filed by Jan Sangharsh Manch led by advocate Mukul Sinha.
The filing of the SIT report yesterday coincided with the Gujarat High Court’s severe rap to the Modi government for failing to control the riots despite having an intelligence collection mechanism in place, thus leading to anarchy. The court delivered an order on a petition seeking rebuilding of some 600 religious structures that were destroyed in the riots.
Sources told The Indian Express that SIT officials huddled with their legal adviser R S Jamuvar, a Delhi-based former lawyer for the CBI, in Gandhinagar on Wednesday discussing the possibility of filing either a ‘C’ or an ‘A’ summary in the case. Both are closure summaries.
A ‘C’ summary is filed for a complaint that is “neither true nor false” or “false but not maliciously false”; an ‘A’ summary is for a complaint that is true but there is no evidence.
The SIT has been under intense pressure since yesterday after civil rights groups and Gujarat Congress chief Arjun Modhwadia reacted sharply to the speculation that a closure report had been filed.
Zakia told The Indian Express, “We don’t know what findings the SIT has given to the court. We have full faith in the Almighty. If we don’t get justice in this world we will definitely get justice in His court.”
Her son Tanveer said, “The SIT submitted the report at the last minute, before the court closed for the day, so we did not get any time. We are waiting to get the report to decide our further course of action. As per the directions of the Supreme Court, the SIT should submit its closure report along with the report of amicus curiae Raju Ramchandran.”
In a related development, retired DGP R B Sreekumar shot off another letter to SIT chief Raghavan on Thursday, seeking his statement on the evidence against Modi to be recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC, thus giving it a legal basis. He listed the evidence he has given to the SIT against Modi.
Sreekumar, who was intelligence chief in 2002, told The Indian Express, “Modi never once confronted me on the reports I had sent, first on April 24, then June 15 and August 28, all in 2002, on how Muslims were losing faith and that the police was colluding with rioters.”
His letter to Raghavan said, “In my view, your act of exonerating Shri Narendra Modi and his collaborators in the anti-minority carnage will be celebrated by all enemies of our motherland, particularly Hindu and Muslim extremists...”
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