New Delhi: The Gujarat High Court on Thursday rejected Zakia Jafri’s plea seeking action against then chief minister Narendra Modi “for a larger conspiracy” in 2002 communal riots in the state.
Jafri, wife of the slain parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri, had challenged a clean chit extended by a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) to Modi and 57 high-level bureaucrats in the riots.
The court upheld the magisterial court’s verdict, accepting SIT’s closure report giving clean chit to Modi, citing lack of “prosecutable evidence” against him.
“The court doesn’t believe in the larger conspiracy theory propounded by the petitioners as the Supreme Court has monitored the investigation. The issue of conspiracy was squarely dealt with by the special court that conducted the trial in Gulbarg Society massacre case,” Justice Sonia Gokani observed.
The court, however, allowed Jafri to challenge the lower court’s decision, which said it had no power to direct the SIT to probe the case further.
“The trial court has limited itself in saying that further investigation, in this case, can’t be ordered. This order of 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 Gokani noted.
Ehsan Jafri was one of 69 people killed by rioters who attacked Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002.
The SIT’s closure report of 2012 had given a clean chit to Modi and others. In December 2013, the Metropolitan Magistrate’s court in Ahmedabad rejected Jafri’s petition against the SIT report. After that, Jafri moved the Gujarat High Court in 2014.
“No charges made by Zakia Jafri were maintainable. The motive behind Zakia Jafri’s filing complaint four years after the riots is not clear,” the SIT report read.
The verdict was seen as another setback for Jafri.
“Those involved in the massacre must get the punishment as they killed people and destroyed their families. I saw them doing it with my own eyes. My husband was dragged out of the Gulbarg Society and killed by the mob. Justice must be delivered after all,” Jafri said reacting to the high court verdict.
