NEW DELHI, Dec 18: Justice (retired) Girish Thakorlal Nanavati, the former judge of the Supreme Court, who had given the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi (now the prime minister) in the infamous 2002 Gujarat riots, passed away at his residence in Ahmedabad on Saturday morning. He was 86.
The former judge died of cardiac failure at 1:15 pm on Saturday, his family members said.
Besides the Gujarat riots, Justice Nanavati had also headed the commission probing the 1984 anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of the former prime minister Indira Gandhi. He was appointed by the NDA government to probe the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and was the sole member of the commission.
Justice Nanavati ’s commission, appointed to probe the Godhra train burning and the subsequent riots in which nearly 1,200 people were killed in Gujarat, had given a clean chit to Modi and his council of ministers, as well as well as to the police, the BJP, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal in its final report. Justices Nanavati and Akshay Mehta had in 2014 submitted their final report on the 2002 riots to the then Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel but the report was made public only in 2019.
The commission had also refused to summon Modi for deposition during the course of hearings in the Gujarat riot case despite demands from the advocates representing the victims of the riot.
Born on February 17, 1935, Nanavati was enrolled as an advocate in the Bombay High Court on February 11, 1958, and remained on the Government Pleaders’ Panel. He was appointed as a permanent judge of the Gujarat High Court from July 19, 1979, and transferred to the Orissa High Court on December 14, 1993. Nanavati was appointed as the chief justice of the Orissa High Court with effect from January 31, 1994. He was transferred as chief justice of the Karnataka High Court from September 28, 1994. Nanavati was appointed as judge of the Supreme Court with effect from March 6, 1995, and retired on February 16, 2000.
(Manas Dasgupta)
