Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 10: The Supreme Court on Wednesday resumed hearing on a petition filed in connection with the 2002 Gujarat riots against the present prime minister Narendra Modi, who then was the chief minister of Gujarat, and others who were given “clean chit” by the investigating agency “without going into the merit of the case.”
The petition was filed by Zakia Jafri, the wife of the slain former Congress member of Parliament Ehsan Jafri, who was among the 68 Muslims killed in the Gulberg Society massacre in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002, a day after the fire in the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express on the outskirts of Godhra railway station in which 59 karsevaks of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad perished and sparked off the violent communal riots in Gujarat.
Zakia Jafri, who had been fighting for “justice” since then, opposed the Special Investigation Team looking into the 2002 Gujarat riots giving a “clean chit” to all those accused of instigating the riots and inaction by the police to bring the situation under control. Jafri told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the SIT ignored a mass of evidence and drew conclusions without any investigation. The SIT did not record statements, seize phones, check how bombs were manufactured and straightaway filed closure reports, contended the 81-year-old, who has challenged the investigative team’s clean chit to Modi and others.
For nearly 20 years, Zakia Jafri has been continuing her battle for justice. The SIT had submitted its closure report in February 2012 — a decade after the riots — and gave a clean chit against Modi and 63 others, citing “no prosecutable evidence.” The Supreme Court has started hearing the case after multiple adjournments.
Arguing on behalf of Zakia Jafri before a bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar, senior advocate and former Union minister Kapil Sibal said he, too, has been a “victim of communal violence” and “lost maternal grandparents in violence that took place after the partition of India in 1947.”
In an earlier hearing, Sibal had contended that the issue goes beyond what happened at the Gulberg society. Ms Jafri’s fight, he had said, was about “law and order, administrative failure” and she was not interested in any “high dignitaries” or convictions at this stage. “People were massacred because of police inaction… I just want matter to be investigated… This is all about law and order and rights of individuals,” he said. There was a larger conspiracy at play in Gujarat, including “complicity of bureaucratic officials, deliberate hate speeches and unleashing of violence,” he had said, contending that there was a body of evidence — 23,000 pages — that nobody has looked into.
“There were people who were massacred because of police inaction. Where will people go if none of the Courts look into the issue? The republic stands or falls based on what the Court does… This republic is too great to look the other way,” he had said.
Sibal said Communal violence was a “fertile ground” for future revenge and like lava erupting from a volcano which scars the ground it touches. “Communal violence is like lava erupting from a volcano. It is institutionalized violence. Wherever that lava touches, it scars the earth. It is a fertile ground for future revenge,” he told the bench.
The senior advocate, who was representing Jafri, said he was not accusing A or B but a message must be sent to the world that this was “unacceptable” and “cannot be tolerated”. He said this is a “historic matter” because the choice was between ensuring that rule of law would prevail or letting people run amok.
On October 26, the apex court had said it would like to peruse the closure report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) giving the clean chit to 64 persons and the justification given by the magisterial court while accepting it.
Sibal had earlier argued that Jafri’s complaint was that there was “a larger conspiracy where there was bureaucratic inaction, police complicity, hate speeches and unleashing of violence”.
Zakia Jafri had filed a petition in the apex court in 2018 challenging the Gujarat High Court’s October 5, 2017 order rejecting her plea against the decision of the SIT. The plea also maintained that after the SIT gave a clean chit in its closure report before a trial judge, Zakia Jafri filed a protest petition which was dismissed by the magistrate without considering “substantiated merits.” It also said the high court “failed to appreciate” the petitioner’s complaint which was independent of the Gulberg Society case registered at a police station in Ahmedabad.
The high court in its October 2017 order had said the SIT probe was monitored by the Supreme Court. However, it partly allowed Zakia Jafri’s petition as far as its demand for a further investigation was concerned. It had said the petitioner could approach an appropriate forum, including the magistrate’s court, a division bench of the high court, or the Supreme Court seeking further investigation.