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Ahmedabad:
Zakia Jafri, wife of 2002 post-Godhra riots victim and former
Congress MP Ahsan Jafri, on Monday filed a protest petition in a
local court seeking rejection of the SIT report giving a clean
chit to Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in the Gulberg
Society riot case.
The protest petition that runs into 514 pages also has three
volumes of annexures and ten CDs. The Citizens for Justice and
Peace (CJP) with its entire legal team has assisted in this
painstaking and voluminous exercise.
The Petitioner strongly argues that the Supreme Court appointed
Special Investigation Team (SIT) had adequate documents and
statements to come to a prima facie finding against all the
accused. SIT, however decided to cover up the crimes and has gone
out of its way to misguide the Court and give a clean chit to the
accused, a statement released by Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP)
said.
"The Protest Petition goes into great detail, relying on documents
from the investigation papers, on how the administration and
police were deliberately paralysed and neutralised by the
conspiracy hatched by Mr Modi, Co-accused, then Gujarat DGP Mr K Chakravari (A-25), then police commissioner, Ahmedabad, PC Pande
(A-29), then additional chief secretary, home, Mr Ashok Narayan
(A-28) and other key members of the bureaucracy and police who
connived as co conspirators in the conspiracy", the statement
added.
"Phone call records show Mr Modi
(accused no 1, A-1) to have been in close touch with Mr Jaideep
Patel (A-21) immediately after information of the Godhra tragedy
comes in, even before he meets home department officials and
ministers. Thereafter, there is a hasty and publicly conducted
post-mortem at Godhra, out in the public against all law and
procedure while a crowd of VHP workers was present. Mr Modi is
present while this happens", it added.
"Thereafter, while passions are being cynically stoked, another
sinister decision to hand over the dead bodies of Godhra victims
to VHP strongman Mr Jaideep Patel (A-21) is taken at a
mini-cabinet meeting presided by Mr Modi in Godhra, at which
co-accused ministers are physically present. Mr Jaideep Patel too
is present at the meeting. Then Godhra district magistrate, Mrs
Jayanti Ravi has clearly stated that Mr Jaideep Patel was present
at the meeting", it said.
"Phone records of the chief
minister’s office (CMO) reveal that he went to the airport to
catch a helicopter for Godhra via Meghaninagar where the massacre
at Gulberg society the next day was organized. Phone records of
the CMO also show that after landing in Ahmedabad from Vadodara by
aircraft (where he had travelled by road from Godhra on his return
journey) too, Mr Modi and officials of the CMO who accompanied him
are located at Meghaninagar late evening (mobile phone call
records)", it said.
"Just a week before the Godhra incident, on 22.2.2002, Mr Modi had
won in the Rajkot bye-election by a slender margin (a few thousand
votes). The glory of his victory had been dimmed with minority
votes going heavily against him. Former CPI leader and later
Parliamentarian from the Congress, Ahsan Jafri had been an active
campaigner against Mr Modi in the bye-election lived in Gulberg
Society, in Meghaninagar", it said.
"In a sinister furtherance of the conspiracy, the late night
meeting at Mr Modi’s residence effectively neutralised the police
and administration from doing its constitutional duty. The Protest
Petition states that the credibility of the evidence related to
the critical 27.2.2002 meeting must be tested during trial and
that it was not the job of the investigating agency to pre-judge
the issue, acting like a court overstepping its jurisdiction to
protect and save powerful accused", it said.
"Evidence from Police Control Room (PCR) records submitted by Mr.
PC Pande to the SIT after 15.3.2011 reveal cynical and
cold-blooded mobilization of RSS workers and VHP men at the Sola
Civil hospital from 4 a.m. onwards on 28.2.2002 in aggressive
anticipation for the arrival of the dead bodies", it added.
"Repeated PCR messages, that the
home department under Mr. Modi (A-1, who held the home portfolio)
and Mr PC Pande (A-21) were trying to conceal, show that both in
Ahmedabad and in several locations all over Gujarat crowds were
mobilized to aggressively parade bodies with bloodthirsty
sloganeering, inciting mobs to attack innocent Muslims", it said.
"The then joint police commissioner, Ahmedabad, Mr Shivanand Jha,
also an accused in the complaint (A-38), was jurisdictionally in
charge of Sola Civil Hospital in Zone 1", it said.
"As the messages extracted below
show, repeated PCR messages desperately ask for bandobast; they
speak of the staff and doctors of the hospital being under threat;
of a 5,000-6,000 strong mob accompanying the bodies and finally
one message also says that “riots have broken out.”", it said.
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