Gujarat riot survivor moves HC over clean chit to Modi

Gujarat riot victim Zakia Jafri on Tuesday filed an appeal against the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court order accepting closure report of the Special Investigating Team (SIT) that gave a clean chit to Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 59 others for their alleged role in the 2002 riots. 

Zakia’s husband, former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, was killed when a rioting mob attacked the Gulbarg Society on February 28, 2002. 

Zakia had filed a petition in the Supreme Court alleging role of Modi, his ministers, bureaucrats and policemen in the riots. 

A Special Investigation Team headed by former CBI director R K Raghavan was constituted by the apex court, and the SIT after an investigation had given a clean chit to those named by Zakia including the chief minister. The metropolitan court had rejected the protest petition filed by Zakia on December 26. 

The criminal revision application filed by Zakia runs into about 540 pages and has laid out substantive grounds for rejection of the order of the lower court. 

The petition states that the metropolitan magistrate committed a fundamental error in law and on facts in failing to exercise his jurisdiction. 

“By not dealing with the substantive arguments laid down by the petitioner in written and oral submissions, the judge has simply accepted the contentions in the closure report with a non-application of mind,” the petition said.

It further stated that the metropolitan court had failed to consider several evidences that were put to establish prima facie the involvement of the Gujarat Chief Minister in serious crimes of conspiracy and abetment and which was sufficient to establish his involvement in the conspiracy and abeitment of crimes of murder, arson and rape. Jafri’s petition says the metropolitan magistrate ought to have accepted the observation of the amicus curie that the matter needed to be tested in the trial. 

In fact the Magistrate completely ignored the contradictions in the statements of various accused regarding who was present and what was spoken at the meeting.