Almost two decades after the infamous Gujarat riots the pot is still burning but in what could be termed as the final nail in the coffin, the apex court of the country upheld the decision of SIT by dismissing the plea filed by Zakia Jafri, wife of then Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed during the riots.
The appeal wanted a further probe and questioned the clean chit given by the SIT to the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi along with 63 others including many senior government officials.
The bench headed by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and comprising of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar said that the appeal was “devoid of merits and deserved to be dismissed,” confirming the Gujarat High Court’s order, brushing off Jafri’s petition against the clean chit given by SIT.
During the relevant hearings, Mukul Rohtagi representing the SIT had argued that the SIT conducted a thorough probe and found no prosecutable evidence. He also mentioned that Teesta Setalvad, the second petitioner had vested interests and was running a politically motivated campaign as she just wanted to keep the issue alive with respect to the 2002 Gujarat riots.
While on the other hand Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioners said that he did not want to target anybody and emphasized that it was SIT’s work to find out who the offenders were, if any offence was committed. He added, that the matter can be closed, if nobody did it and all this happened without anybody doing it, in the backdrop of the material before the court. “But if you feel that offences have been committed then who is responsible is a matter of investigation.”
The SIT had furnished a clean chit to Modi back in 2017 and since then a certain lot of activists have tried to question the same. Rohtagi also pointed out the same stating the allegations have become wilder over the years even after a thorough investigation by the SIT, pointing towards the vested interests of a few activists and politicians to create unwarranted uproar and tremble peace and harmony.
