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Gujarat HC rejects Zakia Jafri’s plea against SIT’s clean chit to PM Modi

The Gujarat High Court rejected Zakia Jafri’s plea challenging a lower court order upholding SIT’s clean chit to then chief…

Gujarat HC rejects Zakia Jafri’s plea against SIT’s clean chit to PM Modi

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Photo: AFP)

The Gujarat High Court rejected Zakia Jafri’s plea challenging a lower court order upholding SIT’s clean chit to then chief minister Narendra Modi and others on allegations of larger conspiracy in connection with the 2002 post-Godhra riots.

The high court, however, allowed Zakia to approach higher forums for further investigation in the case.

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Zakia, the wife of slain former MP Ehsan Jafri, and activist Teesta Setalvad’s NGO Citizen for Justice and Peace had moved the criminal review petition against a magistrate’s order upholding the clean chit given by the special investigation team (SIT) to Modi and others regarding the allegations of a “larger criminal conspiracy” behind the riots.

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The petition demanded that Modi and 59 others — including senior police officers and bureaucrats — be made accused for allegedly being part of a conspiracy which facilitated the riots.

It had also sought the high court’s direction for fresh investigation into the matter.

Ehsan Jafri, a Congress leader, was among 68 people who were killed at the Gulberg Society here when a mob attacked it on February 28, 2002, a day after the Godhra train burning incident which set off riots in the state.

The SIT’s closure report, filed on February 8, 2012, gave a clean chit to Modi and others.

In December 2013, the metropolitan magistrate’s court here rejected Jafri’s petition against the report, after which she moved the high court in 2014.

 

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