Gulbarg massacre: Court asks SIT to produce all documents in 15 days

Ahmedabad: A special court hearing the 2002 Gulbarg society massacre case here today ordered the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigating Team to produce within 15 days all documents related to its final report on Zakia Jafri’s complaint against Narendra Modi and others. Judge KK Bhatt passed the order. The SIT’s final report gives a clean chit to Modi, who was the Gujarat Chief Minister then, and others. [caption id=“attachment_1609303” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Zakia Jafri. AFP[/caption] In November 2011, the survivors of the Gulbarg Society massacre had sought the special court’s direction to SIT to produce the closure report (filed before another court). BJ Dhandha, the judge presiding over the special court then, directed SIT to place the entire report with voluminous documents filed with the complaint of Zakia, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri. The complaint accuses Modi of complicity in facilitating the riots. SIT, after submitting a closure report giving clean chit to Modi before a magistrate, filed a 500-page summary report in the special court. It also challenged, in the high court, the special court’s order to provide documents related to closure report in May 2012, but withdrew it earlier this year. On 3 March, some of the survivors moved the special court seeking a speedy trial. Applicants Saira Sandhi, Salim Sandhi, Rupa Mody and Firoz Gulzar Pathan said that the SIT opposed the plea to make police officers PC Pande, MK Tandon, PB Gondia and the initial investigating officer, ACP Crime Branch S S Chudasama, accused in the case. SIT was not doing justice to the victims, they said. SIT earlier stated before the court that they had not found any evidence against these officers, but later it said their alleged involvement was also being investigated. On 28 February, 2002, following the Godhra train burning incident, 68 people including former MP Jafri were killed by a mob at the Gulbarg Society here. Sixty-one people are being tried in the case. PTI