By IANS,
Gandhinagar/New Delhi: The 2002 Gujarat riots returned to haunt Chief Minister Narendra Modi Thursday when a Supreme Court-appointed investigation team summoned him for questioning March 21 over his alleged complicity in the anti-Muslim violence that rocked the state, particularly in the death of Congress MP Ehsan Jaffri.
According to Special Investigation Team (SIT) chief R.K. Raghavan, Modi was being summoned in connection with a Supreme Court order of April 27 last year on a petition filed by his wife Zakia Jaffri. Zaffri was killed during the rioting at Gulberg society in Ahmedabad.
Zakia’s petition related to the “wider conspiracy” surrounding the 2002 communal riots and named Narendra Modi. The petition was referred by the Supreme Court bench to the SIT with directions to look into it.
In her petition, Zakia says Modi, along with other ministers in his government, conspired to “allow the massacre of Muslims”. She has alleged that the chief minister and his colleagues instructed policemen and bureaucrats not to respond to pleas for help from Muslims being attacked during the riots.
Raghavan said that the chief minister had been summoned to ask him some questions. “A number of witnesses have been questioned, and we would want him to give his side of the story,” he added.
After the questioning of the chief minister, the SIT is expected to submit its report to the Supreme Court by the end of next month.
Zakia has named Modi and 62 others in her complaint. Over 1,000 people had perished in the state-wide communal riots that followed the Godhra train carnage on Feb 27, 2002.
The Supreme Court bench comprising justice Arijit Pasayat and A.K. Ganguly had directed the SIT to submit a report within three months after inquiring into Zakia’s complaint. Jaffri’s wife had first made the complaint against Modi in June 2006, on which the state government refused to register an FIR.
The SIT summons led the Congress to demand that Modi should step down as the chief minister.
Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said in New Delhi: “What has happened today should have actually happened many, many years ago. A chief minister of Gujarat and his government presided over the worst massacre of minorities that independent India has witnessed in the last 62 years.
“It is perhaps for the first time that a sitting chief minister has been summoned to appear before a SIT on mass murder. It would be appropriate that he should step down before appearing before the SIT.”
But Tewari quickly added that “it would be too much to expect” from Modi to do so.