While dismissing a plea challenging the clean given to PM Narendra Modi by SIT in the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Supreme Court today said that the Tehelka tapes are of no avail. The plea was filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed during the violence at Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002. The petitioner had heavily relied on the tapes to alleged that Modi was involved in the riots. The court also said that claims made by people like Sanjeev Bhatt and Haren Pandya were only to seasonalise and politicise the issue.
The Supreme Court bench led by Justice AM Khanwilkar said that while the petitioner has heavily relied on the Tehelka tapes involving alleged confessions of some people that had appeared in 2007, they are not legally acceptable. The bench further said that the tapes were already considered ‘at great length’ by the court between 2008 and 2011 when the court was monitoring the SIT probe, and the tapes are of “no avail”.
The apex court said that the confessions seen in the tapes are extra-judicial and they don’t stand the test of law. The court said that such extra-judicial confessions can be taken only against the maker of the statement, not against other persons mentioned in the statement.
“It does not follow that the contents of such tape would have probative value. Upon investigation, if it was to be found that the tape and the contents have probative value, only then it could be used, that too against the maker of the statement alone and not against any other person,” the court noted.
The court also noted that the SIT had interrogated all the relevant persons seen in the Tehelka sting videos, and their statements were recorded. Moreover, some of the claims made in the tapes were not corroborated by probe of the SIT, like the claim that there was a build-up of arms and ammunition in Gujarat even before Godhra train burning incident.
In another very important observation, the court said that there is no evidence or recovery of the bullet fired from private weapon by any member of the mob that attacked Jafri. Instead, the “empty cartridge shells and bullet casings” found at the site were actually fired from the licenced weapon of Ehsan Jafri.
The bench further noted that the Tehelka tapes only alleges criminal conspiracy at the local level, and they have nothing to do with the allegations of a “larger conspiracy” which was probed by the SIT. The court said that the local level conspiracies were already investigated in respective cases, which includes nine cases probed by the SIT under the supervision of the Supreme Court.
Dismissing the petition, the apex court said that doubting the wisdom of the court would be a travesty of justice, because the entire investigation was completed by the SIT under the supervision and monitoring of the court.
The bench also agreed with the SIT lawyer that Zakia Jafri has been changing goalposts regularly. While she earlier alleged a ‘larger conspiracy’ based on Tehelka tapes and the claims of Sanjeev Bhatt and Haren Pandya, after the SIT found those claims baseless, she changed her position saying “there can be no direct evidence regarding larger conspiracy”.
Dismissing the claims of a larger conspiracy, the court said, “This argument, we unhesitatingly opine, is nothing short of red herring.” The judgement further added, “What has been conveniently glossed over is that, to make out a case of larger criminal conspiracy, it is essential to establish a link indicative of meeting of minds of the concerned persons for commission of the crime(s), committed during the relevant period across the State including the heart-rending episode unfolded at Godhra on 27.2.2002, in which large number of Kar-sevaks were burnt alive in train bogies”.
The court said that the SIT has proved the claims of Sanjeev Bhatt and Haren Pandya to be false, and also found how the state govt did their best to control the riots. The bench said that the statements of Bhatt, Pandya and one R B Sreekumar were only to sensationalise and politicise the issue, however the statements were replete with falsehood.
The Tehelka tapes refers to a sting operation the controversial magazine Tehelka had conducted five years after the 2002 Gujarat riots, which were aired in November 2007 on Aaj Tak. In the tapes, several Sangh Parivar activists had allegedly described that the Gujarat riots were pre-planned by Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal. However, the SIT had found that the tapes had no legal basis, and therefore they were not included in the evidence in the cases. Today the Supreme Court confirmed that the sting tapes are not legally valid.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has rejected material produced by the left-liberal ecosystem who are trying to somehow implicate PM Narendra Modi in the Gujarat riots cases. Earlier, the apex court had refused to consider the book ‘Gujarat Files’ authored by controversial journalist Rana Ayyub in the proceedings. The court had thrashed the book saying that it was based upon surmises, conjectures, and suppositions.
In fact, the claims made by Rana Ayyub in her book are so questionable that even the extreme leftist publications had also refused to publish it, and eventually Ayyub had published it herself. The book was based on a sting operation Rana Ayyub had supposedly conducted, but she has not published the videos still now.
Journalist Madhu Tehran had revealed that she had offered to publish the tapes on Tehelka, but Rana Ayyub had refused.
