SIT Clean Chit To PM Modi In 2002 Gujarat Riots Upheld By Apex Court

The Supreme Court on 24 June upheld the clean chit given previously to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and 63 others in the riots that lashed Gujarat in 2002.

The matter: Congress leader and former MP Ehsan Jafri was among the 68 people killed at Ahmedabad's Gulberg Society during violence on 28 February 2002. This was a day after the Godhra train burning, where 59 people were killed when the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express was burnt at Godhra, triggering riots in the state.

• A special investigation team (SIT), constituted by the apex court in 2008, gave a clean chit to 64 people, including Narendra Modi, who was Gujarat chief minister during the riots, in 2012.

• The SIT report said there was 'no prosecutable evidence' against the accused.

• Zakia Jafri, slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri’s wife, subsequently challenged the SIT's clean chit.

Legal journey: Zakia’s initial complaint of 2006 said there was “a larger conspiracy where there was bureaucratic inaction, police complicity, hate speeches and unleashing of violence” in Gujarat in 2002.

• The SIT’s clean chit came in 2012. Zakia filed a plea against the SIT decision the next year.

• The High Court in its October 2017 order said the SIT probe was monitored by the Supreme Court. However, it partly allowed her petition as far as its demand for a further investigation was concerned.

• Zakia then filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 2018. Her petition challenged the previous year’s High Court order rejecting her plea against the SIT decision.

• On 9 December 2021, the apex court reserved its verdict on the plea.

The verdict: A three-judge bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar upheld the magistrate's order rejecting Zakia Jafri's protest petition against the SIT’s closure report of 2012.

The bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar, said Zakia’s plea, alleging a larger conspiracy in the 2002 Gujarat riots, is devoid of merit.