The Supreme Court-appointed SIT that is probing the 2002 Gujarat riots has termed the allegations of Hindu groups planning the train burning to frame Muslims as ‘absurd’. The SIT has stated that claims of Hindu groups planning the burning of S-6 coach in the Sabarmati Express are baseless.
As per a report in The Indian Express, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the SIT in court, stated, “The allegation is (that) even before the incident, there was arms pile-up before February 27. It boggles my mind. Say I am a radical Hindu member of VHP and I am keeping arms on February 25 without knowing the date of the train burning incident, that makes no sense…”
Advocate Rohatgi further added, “or are you saying this train burning was also orchestrated? That cannot be true. because the train was delayed by five hours and was only going to stop for two minutes. They could not have known. This is absurd. There is a limit to what is being said here.”
“Either they knew the train will be five hours late and the other side will attack and they will have the material to attack back…It’s wild,” Rohatgi added.
It is notable here that there have been countless attempts by the leftist-Islamist groups to paint the Godhra train burning incident as the work of Hindu groups and whitewash the crimes of Islamists who killed 59 innocent Hindus, including women and children.
A bench comprising justices AM Khanwalikar, Dinesh Maheswari and CT Ravikumar was hearing the proceedings. The court was hearing an appeal by Zakia Jafri, wife of former Congress MP Ahsaan Jafri who was killed in the Gujarat riots.
On October 5, 2017, the Gujarat High Court had upheld the order by the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate Court that had accepted the closure report submitted by the SIT. The SIT had given a clean chit to former Gujarat CM Narendra Modi and 63 others in cases related to riots.
Complaint was 30-40 pages, protest petiton was 1200 pages and now records before court are over 20,000 pages
Advocate Mukul Rohatgi stated to the court that Zakia Jafri had filed her complaint in 2006, a year later, by the time she went to HC, Teesta Setalvad had joined in. He reminded that the HC had held earlier that Setalvad had no role in the matter and was not entitled to maintain proceedings in the case. He added that the Supreme Court’s direction to the SIT to examine the complaints by Mrs Jafri were clear and guarded.
“However,” Rohatgi added, “things have been blown out of proportions by the time a protest petition was filed against the Metropolitan Magistrate Court’s order.” The complaint was of 30-40 pages, protest is 1200 pages and now the curt has over 20,000 pages of records before them.
Rohatgi added that Setalvad’s NGO is driving it now and the proceeding, which was ordered to just look into Mrs Jafri’s complaint, with the notion that she may have something to add in the Gulberg Society case, has now been blown into something else because of the involvement of Teesta Setalvad.
Rohatgi added that unrelated events, like the election dates, complaints of police officers against their senior officers etc are bring brought into the hearing. He added that the petitioner’s entire case revolves around 3 people, Sanjiv Bhatt, who is a murder convict, serving time for planting narcotics, RB Sreekumar, who has a complaint against every senior officer and Rahul Sharma, whose own actions of withholding a CD are questionable.
Rohatgi added that the SIT had examined the CM, every top police officers, and all top administrative officials at that time.
The arguments were inconclusive and will be heard again on December 1. Congress leader Kapil Sibal is representing the petitioner in the case.
