By IANS,
Ahmedabad : Taking objection to the tabling in the Gujarat assembly of the probe panel’s report on the Godhra train fire of 2002, a former top state police official Thursday said making it public was premature when a Supreme Court-appointed team was investigating the matter.
“Calling it (the train burning) a conspiracy at this juncture is premature when the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) is already investigating the case. The commission could have waited for the SIT to submit its findings,” said Sreekumar, additional director general of police (intelligence).
He was racting to the first part of the report submitted by the Nanavati-Mehta panel.
“I was asked to term it a conspiracy during those days and I said no. I will never do it,” Sreekumar told IANS from Kerala where he has gone to attend a religious function.
“I was threatened and asked to term the Sabarmati carnage as a conspiracy. All this is mentioned in my affidavits serial Nos 2, 3 and 4 (before the panel),” he said.
Sreekumar came to limelight when he filed the affidavits before the commission alleging complicity of the police force as well as the roles of some “highly placed” people in the communal violence that followed the Godhra incident.
He was sidelined, transferred and in a round of promotions his junior officer superseded him in 2005. Sreekumar complained to the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), which ruled in his favour days before his retirement Feb 28, 2007.
Sreekumar also said that he had submitted his case diary before the CAT and to the inquiry commission which shows official notings of how the state government allegedly tried to pressurise him to go soft on rioters.