Guj riots: SC to hear Zakia Jafri’s plea on Nov 19 challenging clean chit to Modi

NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would hear on November 19 Zakia Jafri’s plea challenging the Gujarat high court order upholding the Special Investigation Team’s (SIT) clean chit given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others on allegations of a larger conspiracy in the 2002 riots in which around 1,000 people were killed in Gujarat.

Jafri’s petition came up before a bench led by Justice AM Khanwilkar, which adjourned it to next week. Zakia is the widow of former Congress lawmaker Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the riots. Social activist Teesta Setalvad is a co-petitioner in the case. Setalvad and her husband have separately been accused by the Gujarat police for allegedly misappropriating funds they received for an NGO run by them.

Jafri and Setalvad challenged SIT’S clean chit to Modi, the CM of Gujarat during the riots, and 58 others, in the Gujarat HC in October 2017 and lost. The SIT, appointed by the SC, had cleared Modi and others after its probe.

Ehsan Jafri and 68 others were killed when a rioting mob attacked the Muslim-dominated Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad in 2002 in the aftermath of the Godhra train carnage. Zakia Jafri’s petition is based on her position that there was a larger conspiracy behind the riots. The petition was first filed in 2012 in a lower metropolitan court in Gujarat, which dismissed it.