SIT 'clean chit' may help Modi exorcise ghost of 2002 riots

Late on Wednesday, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that is investigating a petition from Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri (who was killed in the 2002 Gujarat riots), filed its report before the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court No. 11. No authoritative details are immediately available about the contents of the report, but according to news reports citing unidentified sources, the SIT has found no “prosecutable evidence” against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 61 others, whom Zakia Jafri had the other petitioners had accused of virtual complicity in the riots that engulfed Gujarat in the wake of the Godhra train burning. [caption id=“attachment_86272” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“What next for Narendra Modi?”]  [/caption] Even if the contents of the SIT report as reported are confirmed, it doesn’t in itself amount to a closure of the case against Modi and the others. That process will have to await another round of hearings before the Metropolitan Court, for which the trial judge will give notice to petitioners Zakia Jafri and the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), the NGO headed by Teesta Setalvad. But for all practical purposes, the SIT report could (if its findings are confirmed as has been reported) be the legal “clean chit” that lifts the monkey of the 2002 riots off Modi’s back. It doesn’t mean the political back-and-forth on the issue will not continue, but since the matter has been to the Supreme Court and back, it could just bring about a legal closure to the case. Ironically, the SIT report was filed barely hours after a division bench the Gujarat High Court had pulled up the Modi government for “inaction and negligence” on its part during the riots that led to widespread destruction of religious structures and directed the state to provide compensation. It did amount to a rap on the knuckles for the Modi government – virtually the first in the 10 years since the Gujarat riots –and the Congress was quick to latch on to it to demand Modi’s resignation. But the significance of a ‘clean chit’ from the SIT could go much farther than that. The petition by Zakia Jafri and the CJP relates not just to the killing of Ehsan Jafri and others in the horrific Gulbarg Society massacre. In a larger sense, it targets Modi and the others for the violence in nine districts of Gujarat in the days following the Godhra train carnage of 27 February 2002. The Jafri case was seen by both civil society activists led by Teesta Setalvad and political parties as the key to Modi’s political survival, especially in the context of suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s subsequent affidavit in which he claimed to have been present at a meeting at which Modi  had, he said, ordered the police not to intervene in the riots for days. According to news accounts citing unidentified sources, the SIT report filed on Wednesday  found no substantial evidence to back  Bhatt’s claim. The report is believed to have observed that the only person who could substantiate Bhatt’s claim was his driver Tarachand Yadav, but given Yadav’s criminal record (he was in the past suspended for alleged forgery) his claims were unreliable. The SIT was set up in 2009 to investigate the petition from Zakia Jafri and the CJP, which alleged that Modi and other government officials refused to take action to stop the riots that followed the burning of a train carriage in Godhra in which kar sevaks were returning from Ayodhya. The kar sevaks were returning after offering worship at the Ayodhya site where a makeshift temple was built for Ram in the place where the Babri Masjid stood before it was demolished in 1992. That carnage at Godhra set off communal violence across Gujarat, in which Muslims were principally targeted. In February 2011, the SIT, headed by former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chief RK Raghavan, had submitted to the Supreme Court a 600-page report on the Gulbarg Society case. Although there was much in the report to embarrass the state government, it concluded that the evidence in the case was not strong enough to prosecute Modi. In the course of the investigation, the SIT also interrogated Modi for several hours in two sessions, but found nothing to directly tie him to the attack. Later in 2011, Sanjiv Bhatt filed an affidavit claiming that he had attended a meeting called by Modi on 27 February 2002 – the day of the Godhra train carnage – at which the police were asked not to intervene in the riots to protect Muslims who were targets of attack. In September 2011, the Supreme Court had declined to pass any order on Modi’s alleged inaction to contain the riots, and left it open to the magistrate’s court to decide on the course of action based on the SIT report. Modi had welcomed that Supreme Court ruling, exclaiming to his loyal army of Twitter followers that “God is Great”. The official word on the SIT report isn’t yet out, of course, but if the news reports are confirmed and the SIT has indeed given Modi a ‘clean chit’, he will presumably find more reasons to acknowledge the greatness of God.