People's Democracy

SC Has Never Given Modi a Clean Chit

SAHMAT and Citizens for Justice and Peace have jointly issued the following statement on July 15 regarding the Supreme Court’s clean chit to Narendra Modi.

IN an interview to the foreign news agency Reuters that was published on July 12, 2013, Narendra Modi, Gujarat chief minister has made a desperate attempt to create an impression that Supreme Court has given him a clean chit through the SIT which was appointed by it to investigate the criminal complaint of Zakia Jafri and Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) on April 27, 2009. A section of the media, without verifying the facts has allowed this impression to gain credibility. The facts in relation to the Supreme Court and the SIT are as follows:

The SIT was appointed by the Supreme Court on March 26, 2008 on a petition by Teesta Setalvad, D N Pathak, Cedric Prakash and others, first to look into the nine cases recommended by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to be investigated by the CBI. The same SIT was a year later also asked to look into the criminal complaint against Narendra Modi and 61 others filed first before the Gujarat Police on June 8, 2006.

The SIT submitted its report on the Zakia Jafri and CJP Complaint to the Supreme Court on May 12, 2010 itself recommending that further investigation was required. 

In the interim, the SC had also to drop two officers from the SIT, Shivandand Jha (because he was an accused in the Zakia Jafri complaint) and Geeta Johri who had been found, in the Sohrabuddin case to have serious strictures passed against her by the Supreme Court itself. (April 6, 2010)

The following features of the SIT report need special mention:

(a)    It found the speeches of Narendra Modi objectionable and that Modi had a communal mindset, travelling 300 kilometres to Godhra but not visiting any relief camps that housed the internally displaced Muslims, victims of reprisal killings post Godhra until March 6, 2002.

(b) It found it questionable that bodies of the unfortunate Godhra victims were handed over to a non-government person, Jiadeep Patel of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) who is currently facing trial in the Naroda Gaam massacre case

(c) It found that Sanjeev Bhatt, an officer of the State Intelligence, Gujarat had opined that  he attended the controversial meeting at the chief minister's residence indicating that illegal and objectionable instructions were given.

(d)    It accepted that police officers like R B Sreekumar, Rahul Sharma, Himanshu Bhatt and Samiullah Ansari who had performed their tasks legally had been penalised and persecuted by the Modi regime and those who had buckled under the illegal and unconstitutional instructions had been favoured consistently;

(e) It however still concluded that there is no prosecutable evidence against the chief minister.

The SC was not satisfied with this conclusion and directed that the Amicus Curiae, Raju Ramachandran, who had already been appointed to assist the Supreme Court in this critical case, visit Gujarat, independently assess the evidence garnered and meet with witnesses directly, bypassing SIT.

Amicus Curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted an interim report (January 2011) and final report (July 2011).

The Supreme Court gave the SIT an opportunity to further investigate in light of the Amicus Curiae’s contrary findings and thereafter file a final report before a magistrate on September 12, 2011. In the same order, the SC gave the petitioners the inalienable right to file a protest petition and access all documents related to the SIT.

After its further investigation, the SIT, ignoring the contents of the Amicus Curiae’s report, filed a final closure report on February 8, 2012 without issuing any notice to the complainant Zakia Jafri and CJP as is required under Section 173(2)(ii) of the CrPC. Worse, it fought a hard as nail battle to deny access to any of the documents related to the investigation to the petitioners.

It took a whole year, from February 8, 2012 to February 7, 2013 for the complainant to access all the documents related to the investigation including the SIT reports filed before the Supreme Court. The complainant Zakia Jafri assisted by the CJP filed the protest petition on April 15, 2013.

The petitioners Zakia Jafri and CJP are now arguing in support of the protest petition being allowed, showing through an arduous and rigorous process, how the SIT ignored its own evidence. Arguments that began on June 25 are still going on. 

It is clear from the above that the SC has never given Modi a clean chit on the issue of 2002 pogrom. These facts could have been earlier verified by Reuters as well as the collusive media. We hope that the media will present the facts truthfully in relation to the ‘so-called’ clean chit to Modi.