SIT submits Zakia report documents

The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), on Tuesday, submitted before the court all documents related to the final report of the probe it had undertaken on Zakia Jafri’s petition. The documents — submitted to the court of metropolitan magistrate MS Bhatt — were loaded in five huge trunks and could run into as many as 20,000 pages.

The documents contain mainly the statements of the witnesses, medical evidence and other legal papers. Last month, the SIT had submitted the 200-page final report and the submission of the annexures were pending.

The hearing on the report is scheduled for March 15.The SIT investigated the role of chief minister Narendra Modi and 61 others as alleged by Zakia Jafri, the widow of slain former Congress MP, Ahsan Jafri. Zakia, a victim of Gulbarg Society massacre, had moved a plea before the Supreme Court, saying that the role of Modi and 61 others should be probed for their alleged complicity in the 2002 communal riots. She had also said that a complaint should be lodged against Modi and others.

The SIT had taken statements of Modi and others including, IAS and IPS officers, and political leaders. When the SIT submitted the final report last month, it was widely speculated that Modi had been given a clean chit because of lack of evidence.

The victims of Gulbarg had sought a copy of the final report, but the court had not then decided on the matter. The SIT had protested the contention of the victims. However, the court may now decide on the matter when the hearing on the report begins.

The SIT lawyer had contended that the report should not be shared with anyone until the court took cognizance of it.
It also said it would be premature if the report was shared with anyone as the SIT had to serialise all the documents connected to the report and the court should not make the report public until all documents were submitted before it.