AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat High Court today again deferred the pronouncement of its order on a petition filed by slain former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri’s widow Zakia Jafri, challenging a lower court order which gives ‘clean chit’ to the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now Prime Minister) in the 2002 riots that broke out after the burning of a coach of Sabarmati Express near Godhara railway station.
A single-judge bench of Justice Sonia Gokani fixed September 26 as next date when the judgement was likely to be pronounced.
Justice Gokani today heard from all the sides concerned, the SIT report, clean chit and the complainant. She asked how this matter can be differentiated from the Gulbarg society massacre case to which Zakia’s counsel Mihir Desai said the two matters should not be compared.
SIT counsel on the other hand reiterated his earlier stand that the SIT investigation was under the watchful eyes of the Supreme Court and challenging its report was not proper.
Earlier the court had almost completed the hearing on Zakia’s plea in June this year. After that owing to various technical reasons the pronouncement of judgement had been deferred a couple of times. More
Zakia’s husband Ehsan Jafri was among 69 people killed and burnt by a mob at Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002 a day after the Godhara train burning incident.
She had moved the High Court on March 18, 2014 challenging the December 27, 2013 lower court order which upheld the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team’s report in which it had given the clean chit to Mr Modi in the Gujarat riots cases.
The hearing in the High Court began from August 2015. The Metropolitan court here had rejected Zakia’s plea to book Mr Modi and others for criminal conspiracy (120-B of the IPC), after which she moved the High Court.
She in her more than 500-page complaint also named bureaucrats, police and private individuals apart from Mr Modi and other politicians as conspirators of Gujarat riots. It alleged that the Metropolitan Magistrate had accepted the closure report of SIT without considering substantive arguments of the complainant. The NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CPJ), run by controversial social activist Teesta Setalvad was also a co-complainant in the matter. The criminal review petition by Zakia and Setalvad, had demanded making Mr Modi and over 50 others as accused on charges of criminal conspiracy behind the riots.
During the hearing, SIT advocate C S Vaidyanathan had in his concluding argument said the SIT report challenged by Zakia was in fact based on the investigation conducted under ‘the watchful eyes of the apex court and was largely accepted by all’.
He also had said that the lower court had looked into all aspects of allegations to conclude that there was no further need to investigate the matter from larger conspiracy angle.
On the other hand, Zakia’s counsel Mihir Desai had claimed that the Magistrate who accepted the SIT’s closure report without considering all aspects. The court had after conclusion of the hearing had also sought the status of various pleas related to the matter filed in the apex court and another bench of the High Court.
Notably, a special SIT court had on June 17 last year awarded life terms to 11 of the 24 convicts of Gulbarg Society case and 10-year term for one while seven-year term for remaining 12, including VHP leader Atul Vaidya. There were a total of 66 named accused of whom 6 had died during the course of trial while 36 were acquitted by the SIT court. Zakia has also challenged that order questioning the acquittal of so many accused.
(AGENCIES)
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