Gujarat HC Allows Zakia Jafri to Appeal for New Probe in Modi’s Role in 2002 Riots
In what appears
to be a silver lining in an otherwise adverse judgment for Zakia Jafri, the
wife of Congress politician Ehsan Jafri who was killed by a mob in the Gulberg
Society massacre in Ahmedabad during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots, the Gujarat
high court on Thursday allowed her to move the courts to request a fresh
investigation into the alleged criminal role of the then chief minister
Narendra Modi and 61 others.
Zakia had moved the high court in
2014 against the closure report filed by the Supreme Court-appointed
special investigative team (SIT). Zakia had also alleged in her petition
that the 2002 riots were part of a larger conspiracy involving Modi and others. The closure
report – submitted by the
SIT in 2012 at a trial court hearing Zakia’s pleas – had stated
that the SIT could not find any “prosecutable” evidence against the accused
persons, as a result of which it could not press any charges against Modi and
others.
Protesting this,
Zakia had appealed to the metropolitan magistrate’s court demanding a
fresh probe, but her appeal was dismissed in 2013. The magistrate, B.G.
Ganatra, had ruled that since the SIT was monitored by the Supreme Court, he
did not have the power to order a fresh investigation. This had forced
Zakia to file her petition at the high court, which started final hearings
in the case in 2015. On Thursday, the high court upheld the validity of the
closure report and dismissed Jafri’s allegation.
However, the high
court allowed Zakia to demand a fresh investigation in the case – as
sought by her in the petition – and overturned the trial court’s observations,
which had ruled out another probe as it thought the SIT was monitored by the
Supreme Court. “The trial court has
self-limited itself in saying that further investigation, in this case, can’t
be ordered. This order of [the] lower court deserves interference. So, the
petitioner can raise the issue before the concerned court that is the same
magisterial court, the division bench of the high court or the Supreme Court,”
Justice Sonia Gokani told the Indian Express. Effectively, the high
court judgment has created an opening for Zakia to seek redressal at a
lower court instead of the Supreme Court, which would have been her last stop
for appeal.. read more:
https://thewire.in/184802/
