By IANS,
New Delhi: Asserting that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has shown a great sense of responsibility in appearing before the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigating Team probing 2002 riots cases, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said Sunday that Modi has proved his critics wrong.
“He (Modi) answered questions in a cool, calm, collected and cooperative way for nine hours,” party spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters.
She said “Modi-baiters” spread rumours that he would not appear before the SIT or await developments of the early April proceedings in the Supreme Court.
“The Congress should take a lesson from this, that a popular elected chief minister has kept his word,” Sitharaman said, adding that Modi appeared before the SIT after getting a letter from the Supreme Court-appointed panel.
The spokesperson said that investigation officers chosen by the SIT to look into the Gulbarg Society killings were “non-Gujaratis”.
She said Zakia Jaffri, who had complained about not getting justice in Gujarat, did not appear for a year before the committee appointed by the state CID to look into her grievance.
Modi is being probed following a complaint by Zakia, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jaffri who was among the 69 people massacred in the Gulbarg Society during the riots.
Despite repeated phone calls to Modi and senior police officials no help was extended to prevent the massacre at Gulbarg Society, Zakia has claimed.
Zakia has alleged that the chief minister was party to the 2002 widespread violence that swept Gujarat following the burning of two coaches of a train in Godhra that killed 59 people in 2002.