Shashwati Chowdhury
Published on: June 24, 2022 at 18:24 IST
Supreme Court dismissed a plea brought by Zakia Jafri, the widow of former Congressman Ehsan Jafri, that challenged the Special Investigations Team’s “clean chit ” give for then-chief minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Justice A M Khanwilkar-led Bench upheld the Special Metropolitan Magistrate’s decision to deny Jafri’s protest petition against the SIT’s closure report.
The Court Upheld the Gujarat High Court’s order and declared Jafri’s plea to be without merit.
The violence at the Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002 resulted in the deaths of 69 people, including Ehsan Jafri. The SIT’s clean chit has been challenged by Zakia Jafri against 64 people, including Narendra Modi.
After the SIT headed by former CBI chief R. Raghavan concluded that there was no prosecutable evidence to bring charges against the Gujarat CM, Jafri approached to the Supreme Court. The investigation was carried out by the SIT at the apex court’s direction.
Zakia Jafri submitted a petition on December 9, 2021, requesting an investigation into a larger conspiracy that led to the riots in Gujarat.
She had contended that the SIT had not thoroughly investigated all of the evidence that pointed to a bigger conspiracy, but the Supreme Court’s bench of Justices A. M. Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari, and CT. Ravikumar found no merit in the allegations and rejected her plea.
Zakia had petitioned the Supreme Court, citing a “larger conspiracy” in the riots, to challenge the Gujarat High Court’s ruling from October 5, 2017, upholding the SIT’s clean chit.
The Magisterial Court’s Order, accepting the SIT Closure Report, was upheld by the Gujarat High Court.
Zakia had already turned to the Gujarat High Court in 2014 after the Magisterial Court had dismissed the plea challenging the SIT report.
Zakia had petitioned the top court in her plea, which read “Grant.ad-interim order to Special Investigation Team (SIT) to carry out a further investigation under section 173(8) of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in regard to the petitioner’s complaint dated June 8, 2006, and the evidence placed before the learned through the protest petition dated April 15, 2013”.