By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Monday asked a team that probed a Gujarat riots case if it had supplied all the documents it relied upon while filing the closure report, to a victim’s widow Zakia Nasim Jaffri.
Zakia in her petition gave a list of statements by 25 people who were examined by the special investigation team (SIT) and several annexures. She contended that the SIT relied upon these statements while filing the closure report but copies of these were not given to her.
She alleged deliberate inaction on part of the Gujarat Chief Minister Narender Modi, his cabinet colleagues and some high-ranking state officials in preventing the Gulberg Society carnage in Ahmedabad.
In the 2002 incident, 69 people, including the Zakia’s husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, were killed. The rampaging mob targeted members of Muslim community in the neighbourhood and set it afire.
The apex court bench of Justice D.K. Jain and Justice Madan B. Lokur query was directed at former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director R.K. Raghavan who headed a special investigation team (SIT) which investigated the case.
The court’s poser was based on Zakia’s plea that all the documents that the SIT had relied upon while coming to the conclusion that there was no alleged deliberate inaction on the part Modi or officials were not given to her.
Justice Jain said: “Documents which form part of the closure report have to be given without which they (Zakia Jaffri) can’t file protest petition.”
“We want to sort out the issue so that justice is given to everyone. Be it complainant or alleged accused,” said Justice Jain, impressing upon the SIT that no document it had relied upon could be held back from Zakia.
The apex court Sep 12, 2011, said that in case the SIT decided to file a closure report then the trial court in Ahmedabad would give the copy of the closure report and all other documents that SIT relied upon to Zakia.
While Raghavan and one of his colleagues told the court that all documents that they had relied upon had been supplied to Zakia, the court asked them to once again look into their records to ascertain the contention of the widow.
The court said that if Zakia had not been given all the statements and annexures which the SIT had relied upon before filing the closure report then she would not be in a position to file her protest petition.
Counsel Kamini Jaiswal, who appeared for Zakia, told the court that “these are the documents which have been referred to in the closure report but have not be given to us”.
On April 27, 2009, the apex court had asked the SIT to look into the complaint of Zakia allegedly blaming 63 people, including the chief minister, for inaction.