Summary:
New Delhi, Oct 26 (PTI) The Supreme Court Tuesday said it would like to peruse the closure report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) giving the clean chit to 64 persons, including Narendra Modi who was the Gujarat chief minister during the 2002 riots in the state, and the justification given by the magisterial court while accepting it.A bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar commenced the hearing on the plea of Zakia Jafri, the wife of slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri, challenging the SIT’s clean chit with her lawyer Kapil Sibal submitting, “We are not concerned with high dignitaries.
There is nothing political.
We are on law and order and the rights of an individual.” The senior lawyer said that he did not want conviction of the persons named in Jafri’s complaint at the moment and his case was that there was “a larger conspiracy where there was bureaucratic inaction, police complicity, hate speeches and unleashing of violence”.
While Sibal was making the submissions, the bench, which also comprised Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar, said “we want to see the justification given in the closure report (of the SIT).
We want to see the order of the magistrate and his reasoning in accepting the report.” The senior advocate referred to the apex court’s orders, reports of the SIT and amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran to show that the clean chit and its subsequent acceptance by the courts below were not restricted to the Gulberg Society case in which Ehsan Jafri was among the 68 people killed in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002.“We have made endeavours to show to the court that the SIT’s reports were not limited to the Gulberg Society massacre and even the complaint of Zakia Jafri and the closure report were not confined to one case alone,” Sibal said, adding that the lower courts refused to consider the materials.“If we limit it only to Gulberg then what happens to the concept of rule of law, what happens to all material.
A Republic stands or falls on the basis of what the court does,” he said.Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that the original complaint was filed by Zakia Jafri, who stayed in the Gulberg Society at Ahmedabad.At the outset, Sibal referred to the list of dates in the matter starting from the 2002 riots in Gujarat and said the petitioner had filed a complaint to the Director-General of Police (DGP) saying that before the “horrible” tragedy, there were certain aspects which instigated communal violence.