The Supreme Court yesterday ordered a special probe panel to investigate the role of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and top state officials in the 2002 communal riots and submit a report within three months.
A bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly also ordered the Raghavan Committee panel, headed by former CBI Director R K Raghavan, to probe the roles of 62 other top ranking politicians, bureaucrats and police officers of the state.
The others against whom the probe was ordered included, Modi’s 11 cabinet colleagues, three sitting state legislators and 38 high-ranking police officers and bureaucrats. Former state chief secretary and ex police chief are also under the scanner.
The court also directed the Raghavan panel to ascertain the role of several BJP and Shiv Sena leaders in the riots that engulfed the state after 39 Hindus were burnt to death in a train at Godhra railway station on their way back home from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya. The probe was ordered on a joint lawsuit by the widow, Jakia Nasim Ahesan, of former parliamentarian Ali Ehsan Jafri, who was allegedly pulled out of his house at Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad by the riotous mob and was hacked to death.
Jakia challenged a Gujarat High Court ruling of November 2007, which had rejected her plea to probe the role of Modi and others in the Gujarat riots.
She had first approached the Gujarat police and then the high court for registration of criminal cases against Modi, his erstwhile cabinet colleagues and bureaucrats, on the basis of deposition and statements made by various riot victims before a judicial panel headed by Justice G T Nanawati.
But the police and the high court rejected her plea saying the state authorities had registered cases to investigate various incidents which she wanted to be probed with a specific reference to role of Modi and other state authorities in aiding and abetting the riots.
The high court had also rejected her plea on the ground that the depositions made before judicial panels had no value as evidence in criminal cases and, accordingly, the material on which she relied for the registration of cases had been termed useless by the court. Jakia had moved the apex court in December 2007 and the court first issued notice to the Gujarat government on her lawsuit on March 3, 2008.
Senior lawyer Mukul Sinha, who has been arguing the cases of the Gujarat 2002 riots victims in the high court, yesterday welcomed the Supreme Court order to probe the possible involvement of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet colleagues and senior police officials in the anti-Muslim violence that left over 1,000 people dead.
“This order (of the Supreme Court) was long awaited. Anyway, it is never too late. The order is also not particularly confined to the massacre of Muslims at the Gulbarga Society and is general in nature for rioting that took place even in other parts of Ahmedabad,” he said. Minutes after the Supreme Court order, a large number of security personnal were deployed across Ahmedabad. Police personnel were also deployed at major highway intersections.
The Congress party yesterday said that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi must step down for “justice to prevail” after the Supreme Court ordered a probe into Modi’s role in the 2002 communal riots in his state.
Reacting to the apex court directive, Congress spokesperson M Veerappa Moily said: “Narendra Modi will have to step down for justice to be done.”
Asked why the Congress had not done enough for the Gujarat victims despite being in power at the centre for five years, Moily said: “We have a very limited role in this context since law and order is a state subject.”
Welcoming the court’s order, he said: “We are happy, it is one such case which has opened the eyes of the judiciary. The manner in which justice has been delayed is a matter of concern, and our judiciary will have to reckon that.”
Asked to react to Modi being projected as a future prime ministerial candidate by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Moily said that Modi doesn’t “deserve to be the chief minister, let alone the prime minister”.
Source: The Peninsula
