By TCN Special Correspondent,
Ahmedabad: Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) secretary Teesta Setalvad has been summoned by the Panchmahals district police for her interrogation in Lunavada mass grave digging case on May 9.
Setalvad, who has been extending legal assistance to the victims of 2002 communal riots, was booked in the case in December last year after her former aide Raees Khan alleged that he and five others had exhumed the bodies at the behest of Setalvad.
However, Setalvad was granted anticipatory bail by the court on January 29, 2011.
Panchmahals Superintendent of Police informed mediapersons that Setalvad had been summoned for questioning in the case on May 9.
A total of 32 Muslims in Panderwada were reported to have been killed on March 1, 2002, during the statewide communal riots. However, bodies of 28 persons were not found.
When Khan working for CJP at that time came to know that the bodies were buried in the bed of the river near Lunawada (30 kms from Godhra), he, assisted by five relatives of the deceased, exhumed the bodies in January 2006 and buried them again as per Islamic rituals after having conducted DNA tests to identify them.
Though police registered cases against them for unauthorized exhuming, the Gujarat high court had stayed the proceedings in the case.
But the case was re-opened after Khan fell out with Setalvad in November 2010. While Khan and five others were arrested in the case and released on bail, Setalvad was also implicated. But she secured anticipatory bail.
Surprisingly, all the 21 accused in the Panderwada massacre were acquitted by the Godhra sessions on October 29, 2002, for want of evidence. A senior police official in a report submitted to the state government had stated that the Panderwada case fell because of laxity in investigations by the police.
E-mail hacking case against Setalvad comes a cropper
Khan in February this year filed a criminal complaint with cyber crime cell of Ahmedabad crime branch alleging that his e-mail ID, while working with CJP, was hacked and the affidavits prepared by him on behalf of the Naroda Gam victims were tampered with by Setalvad.
But the cyber cell sleuths say that the investigations in the case have failed to establish if Khan’s email account was hacked. An official in the cyber cell told mediapersons that since hacking was reported to have been done three years ago, it was not possible to detect it now.
Setalvad denies allegations of Yasmin Sheikh in Best Bakery case
In a statement issued on Monday, Setalvad strongly denied the allegations by Yasmin Sheikh, a witness in the Best Bakery mass massacre case, of having “lured and misled her in giving a false deposition in the case’’. Sheikh has made these allegations in an affidavit she filed in the Bombay High Court a few days ago.
Setalvad said that even the special court in Mumbai which conducted retrial in the Best Bakery case and convicted nine accused had clearly mentioned in the judgment that Setalvad had not tutored the witnesses.
CJP secretary alleged that Sheikh’s complaint was filed at the behest of the communal forces in Gujarat who wanted “to derail cases against the mighty and powerful in Gujarat that are close to conclusion’’.