Twenty years after the Gujarat riots of 2002, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on an appeal that questioned the special investigation team’s decision to exonerate Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the state’s chief minister at the time, and 62 other individuals for their alleged involvement in the violence.
Zakia Jafri, the wife of Congress leader Ehsan Jafri, who was killed during the violence at Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002, challenged the SIT’s clean chit to the 64 people.
Senior attorney Mukul Rohatgi, who represented the SIT, told the bench that if the trial court and the Gujarat High Court’s ruling on Jafri’s appeal is not upheld, it could lead to an endless process because of the intentions of social activist Teesta Setalvad, Petitioner Number 2 in the case.
The SIT did not conduct an investigation, but rather a collaborative exercise, and its investigation was riddled with omissions to protect conspirators, according to Kapil Sibal, who appeared on behalf of Zakia Jafri before the top court.
“The SIT was drawing conclusions that were at odds with the facts they knew about. In fact, there should be an investigation into the SIT. It’s accurate… I’m not worried about specific people. I have concerns about the procedure. I’m merely asserting that SIT failed to perform. It was a protective measure. It performed a cooperative exercise,” Kapil Sibbal said
Sibal claimed that there was evidence of a conspiracy in the form of electronic records, including call data records of senior police officials and mobs that identified Muslim homes.
“The SIT claimed that he was handling the victims’ bodies from Godhra, but call data records revealed that he had spent the entire day sitting in an office. Is handling corpses his responsibility? Would he have permitted the bodies to be transported by road from Godhra to Ahmedabad and allowed resentments to flare up if he had been so worried? Among the worst team members was PC Pandey. Later on, he was named Gujarat’s DGP. The transition from accused to DGP is unsettling ” Advocate Sibal submitted to the bench.
The top court dismissed Zakia Jafri’s petition as “devoid of merits,” upholding the Special Investigation Team’s clearance of the state’s former Chief Minister. The court upheld the Special Investigation Team closure report, which exonerated Prime Minister Modi and 63 other people based on “no prosecutable evidence” and was submitted in February 2012, a decade after the riots.
The Special Metropolitan Magistrate’s decision to deny Jafri’s protest petition against the SIT’s closure report was upheld by a bench led by Justice A M Khanwilkar. Since the Gulbarg Society massacre was a local police matter, the Supreme Court had referred it to the district magistrate’s court in the area in 2011.