The monkey of the 2002 post-Godhra riots may not be off Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s back yet. It emerges now that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by former CBI director RK Raghavan has not given Modi a clean chit and in fact, finds him guilty on several counts. The SIT had submitted its report to the Supreme Court in May 2010.
Weekly magazine Tehelka claims to have accessed the 600-page report, which has been kept under wraps by the court. The exposé, made public on Thursday, questions the SIT’s reluctance to probe further despite finding Modi guilty of destroying crucial records, making inflammatory speeches, appointing Sangh members as public prosecutors for the riots cases and positioning ministers in the police control room during riots. According to the report, the SIT has held Modi responsible for persecution of neutral officers too.
The magazine also quotes the SIT report as stating that the Gujarat police carried out patently shoddy investigations in the Naroda Patia and Gulberg Society massacre cases.
The SIT was formed in 2008 on the basis of a petition by Zakia Jafri, widow of Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri, who was killed in the communal riots that engulfed Gujarat after the burning of Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002. Zakia, in her petition, had named Modi as the principal accused.
Following the SC brief, SIT interrogated all the accused, which included seven ministers of the then Modi government, BJP and VHP leaders, senior bureaucrats, police officers. Modi himself was questioned for nine hours at a stretch on March 25, 2010.
According to the magazine, the report observed that Modi’s behaviour was questionable when tempers were running high after the Godhra incident in which 52 karsevaks were killed.
The SIT has also found evidence of the complicity of the then minister of state for home Gordhan Zadafia and top cops like MK Tandon and PB Gondia in the riots. Though the above allegations have been found to be true, they can’t be further investigated under the law, the report says.
Tehelka interprets this remark to say, “By doing so, SIT has hinted at the lack of adequate legal provisions to punish government functionaries guilty of adding and abetting communal massacres.”
The SIT has said it was a mere fact-finding exercise and not an investigation under the CrPC which would have given the SIT teeth and legal powers to carry out a full-fledged investigation.
No police officer or bureaucrat was ready to speak up against Modi, Tehelka’s exposé says, quoting the report. “The SIT has now put the ball in the court of the three judge bench — DK Jain, P Sathasivam and Aftab Alam — which will convene on March 3 and decide the future course of action,” the statement concludes.
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