Ehsan Jafri’s son, Teesta slam SIT
By Special Correspondent 5/7/12
The son of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who Hindu mobs burnt to death in Ahmedabad during the 2002 massacre of Muslims, has slammed the Special Investigative Team (SIT) for claiming that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi committed no offense even if he ordered his police to allow the killings.
While rejecting the allegation that Modi at all gave such an instruction to his police, the SIT report, submitted to a court last month, said that even if Modi did so, it would not be an offence because he was speaking within the “four walls of a room”.
“To suggest that such a comment from the chief minister in front of the top police officers would not impact the killings is absurd,” Tanveer Jafri told Newzfirst Monday over telephone from Ahmedabad. “The SIT has failed to do its job.”
Jafri said there is copious evidence that the attackers had collected explosives, swords and other materiel more than a year in advance before the anti-Muslim hate violence began on February 28, 2002 and killed more than 2,000 people.
“They [the Hindu groups] were waiting for such kind of an incident,” Jafri said.
Hindu mobs rampaged across Gujarat killing, maiming and raping Muslims for weeks beginning February 28, 2002. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had called a statewide protest against the burning of a train at Godhra city in which at least 58 people, most of them VHP volunteers, had died.
Activist Teesta Setalvad, who has waged a grim battle for a decade to bring the killers to justice, also criticized the SIT for saying Modi’s order to police officers to stand by and allow the mobs to kill the Muslims would not be an offence.
“This is absolutely shocking,” Setalvad said. “If a special investigative team appointed by the Supreme Court believes that a statement made by the chief executive of a state, an instruction that is clearly unconstitutional, is not an offense, then what is an offense?”
A court in Ahmedabad Monday gave a copy of the SIT report to Zakia Jafri, the widow of Ehsan Jafri. The Supreme Court appointed the SIT in 2008 on a plea by Ms. Jafri who had contended that the Gujarat government was deliberately sabotaging the investigations and prosecution into the killing of her husband and others.
A court here had noted last month that the SIT, which was led by former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director, R. K. Raghavan, had rejected charges by two police officers that Modi ordered the police to allow the Muslims’ killings.
One of the two police officers, R. B. Sreekumar, slammed the SIT report.
“Even a constable at the police training school would not write such a thing,” Sreekumar told newzfirst. “In his haste to be more loyal than the king, Raghavan has lost his balance.”
In separate affidavits to the SIT, Sreekumar and police officer Sanjiv Bhatt had claimed that Modi met his top police officers at a meeting at his official residence on February 27, 2002 and ordered them to allow the VHP protesters to “vent their anger” against the Muslims the next day.
Sreekumar, who has since retired, told the SIT that the state’s then police chief, K. Chakravarty, had told him of Modi’s orders the next day.
Superintendent of Police Sanjiv Bhatt told the SIT that he was present at Modi’s meeting.
Gujarat government suspended and arrested Bhatt last year. He was later given bail.
Source: http://www.newzfirst.com
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