Press Statement on Supreme Court clean chit to Narendra Modi

15, Jul 2013

July 15, 2013

In an interview to the foreign news
agency Reuters that was published on July 12 2013, Narendra Modi,
Gujarat Chief minister has made a desperate attempt to creat an
impression that
Supreme Court has given him a clean chit through the SIT
which was appointed by it to investigate the criminal complaint
of Zakia Jafri and Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) on
27.4.2009. A section of the media, without verifying the facts has
allowed this impression to gain credibility. The facts in relation
to Supreme Court
and SIT are as follows:

The SIT was appointed by the
Supreme Court
on 26.3.2008 on a petition by Teesta Setalvad, D.N.Pathak, Cedric
Prakash and Others, first to look into the nine cases recommended
by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to be investigated
by the CBI. The same SIT was a year later also asked to look into
the criminal complaint against Narendra Modi and 61 others filed
first before the Gujarat Police on 8.6.2006.

The SIT submitted its report on the Zakia Jafri and CJP Complaint
to the Supreme
Court on 12.5.2010 itself recommending that Further
Investigation was required.

In the interim, the SC had also to drop two officers from the SIT,
Shivandand Jha (because he was an accused in the Zakia Jafri
complaint) and Geeta Johri who had been found, in the Sohrabuddin
case to have serious strictures passed against her by the Supreme
Court itself. (April 6 2010)

The following features of the SIT report need special mention:

(a) It found the speeches of N Modi objectionable and that Modi
had a communal mindset, travelling 300 kilometres to Godhra but
not visiting any relief camps that housed the internally displaced
Muslims, victims of reprisal killings post Godhra until 6.3.2002.

(b) It found it questionable that bodies of the unfortunate Godhra
victims were handed over to a non-government person, Jiadeep Patel
of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) who is currently facing trial
in the Naroda Gaam massacre case;

(c) It found that Saneev Bhatt an officer of the State
Intelligence, Gujarat had opined that he attended the
controversial meeting at the chief minister’s residence indicating
that illegal and objectionable instructions were given.

(d) It accepted that Police Officers like RB Sreekumar, Rahul
Sharma, Himanshu Bhatt and Samiullah Ansari who had performed
their tasks legally had been penalised and persecuted by the Modi
regime and those who had buckled under the illegal and
unconstitutional instructions had been favoured consistently;

(e) It however still concluded that there is no prosecutable
evidence against the chief minister

The SC was not satisfied with this conclusion and direcetd that
the Amicus Curaie Mr. Raju Ramachandran, who had already been
appointed to assist the
Supreme Court
in this critical case, visit Gujarat, independently assess the
evidence garnered and meet with witnesses directly, bypassing SIT.

Amicus Curaie Raju Ramachandran submitted and Interim report
(January 2011) and Final report (July 2011).

The Supreme Court
gave the SIT an opportunity to further investigate in light of the
Amicus Curaie’s contrary findings and thereafter file a Final
Report before a Magistrate on 12.9.2011. In the same order the SC
gave the petitioners the inalienable right to file a Protest
petition and access all documents related to the SIT

After its further investigation the SIT, ignoring the contents of
the Amicus Curaie report, filed a final closure report on 8.2.2012
without issuing any notice to the complainant Zakia Jafri and CJP
as is required under Section 173(2)(ii) of the CRPC. Worse, it
fought a hard as nails battle to deny access to any of the
documents related to the investigation to the petitioners.
It
took a whole year, from 8.2.2012 to 7.2.2013 for the complainant
to access all the documents related to the Investigation including
the SIT Reports filed before the Supreme Court. The complainant
Zakia Jafri assisted by the CJP filed the Protest Petition on
15.4.2013.

The petitioners Mrs. Zakia Jaffri and CJP are now arguing in
support of the Protest Petition being allowed, showing through an
arduous and rigorous process, how the SIT ignored its own
evidence. Arguments that began on June 25 are still going on.

It
is clear from the above that the SC has never given Mr. Modi a
clean chit on the issue of 2002 pogrom. These facts could have
been earlier verified by Reuters as well as the collusive media. We
hope that the media will present the facts truthfully in relation
to the Â‘so-calledÂ’ clear chit to Mr. Modi

SAHMAT

CITIZENS FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE

SAHMAT
29 Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-110001
Tel:011-23381276/011-23070787

email:[email protected]
Website:
www.sahmat.org