The team will be headed by R K Raghavan, a former Central Bureau of Investigation director, with C B Satpathy, retired IPS officer from Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat senior Police officers Shivanand Jha, Ashish Bhatia and Geeta Johri as members.
The SIT would be free to evolve its own modalities for the purpose of carrying out investigations into the cases, the apex court said.
The team “shall inquire, investigate/further investigations into these cases and submit its report in 3 months,” a bench of Judges Arjit Pasayat, P Sathasivam and Aftab Alam said. 
“Communal harmony is the harmony of a democracy. No religion teaches hatred...Religious fanatics do not belong to any religion. They are worse than terrorists,” the court observed.
The court’s directives follow a series of petitions filed by the NHRC and NGOs, which had sought transfer of the trial of the riots cases outside Gujarat, after several witnesses turned hostile amidst allegations of threat, coercion and inducement to derail the investigation.
The NHRC said the state government’s probe had implicated the wrong people and let off the real culprits.