Gujarat High Court on Thursday rejected a plea filed by Zakia Jafri against Prime Minister Narendra Modi challenging the clean chit given to the latter for his role in Gujarat genocide that killed more than 4,000 people, mostly Muslims.
The official number of those killed in what term as India’s own holocaust at 1200.
Modi was exonerated by a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by RK Raghavan. Last month, Raghavan was rewarded with a plump posting of Cyprus envoy by the Modi government. Another officer associated with the SIT, YC Modi, was made the NIA chief in another appointment by the central government.
The High Court refused to accept Jafri’s allegation of “a larger conspiracy.” Her husband and a former Congress MP, Ehsaan Jafri, was burnt alive by the Hindu mob, who attacked Gulberg Society on 28 February 2002. 69 people were massacred that day in the society.
The court, however, allowed Jafri to challenge the lower court’s decision. The lower court had said that did not have power to direct the SIT to probe the case further. Raghavan-headed SIT had submitted its report giving clean to Modi and others on 8 February, 2012, while the lower court gave its verdict in 2013.
She had approached the High Court in 2014 against the lower court’s order accepting the SIT report that exonerated Modi claiming that he had taken all possible steps to control the genocide. The HC had begun its hearing in 2015.
More to follow