Judge who probed Guj, 1984 riots dies

Ahmedabad, Dec. 18: Former Supreme Court Judge Justice Girish Thakorlal Nanavati, who headed commissions which inquired into the 1984 anti-Sikh and 2002 post-Godhra riots, died here on Saturday.

Nanavati, 86, died of cardiac failure at 1:15 pm at his residence here, family members said.

The commission headed by him had given a clean chit to the then Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government with regard to the post-Godhra communal riots.

Nanavati, born on February 17, 1935, was enrolled as an advocate in the Bombay High Court on February 11, 1958.

He was appointed as permanent judge of the Gujarat high court from July 19, 1979, and transferred to the Orissa HC on December 14, 1993.

Nanavati was appointed as the Chief Justice of the Orissa HC with effect from January 31, 1994.

Nanavati was appointed as judge of the Supreme Court with effect from March 6, 1995, and retired o n February 16, 2000.

After the burning of two coaches of Sabarmati

Express at Girish

Godhra in Nanavati which 59 “karsevaks” died and the subsequent riots in February 2002, then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi set up a one-member commission of Justice Nanavati for conducting inquiry.

It was to probe both the train burning incident and the subsequent communal violence in which over 1,000 people, mostly from the minority community, died.

Earlier, Justice Nanavati was appointed to a one-man commission to investigate the 1984 anti-Sikh riots by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre in May 2000.

The riots had broken out following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.