Gujarat riots: Collaborators later rewarded, victim's wife tells SC

Zakia Jafri's husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was burnt alive with 68 others in Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society

Supreme Court of India: File picture

R. Balaji   |   TT  |   New Delhi   |  12.11.21: Officials who “collaborated” in the 2002 Gujarat violence or in the scuttling of a probe into the possible role of VIPs were later rewarded, a riot victim’s wife told the Supreme Court on Thursday.

R.K. Raghavan, chief of the special investigation team (SIT) that gave a clean chit to then chief minister Narendra Modi and others, was appointed high commissioner to Cyprus and then Ahmedabad police commissioner P.C. Pandey was promoted to Gujarat director-general of police, Zakia Jafri’s counsel Kapil Sibal submitted.

Zakia, whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was burnt alive with 68 others in Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society, had got the apex court to appoint the SIT to probe her riot conspiracy charges against Modi, some other ministers and police officers.

She has now challenged Gujarat High Court's 2017 ruling upholding the trial court's acceptance of the SIT's closure report. The Citizens for Justice and Peace is a co-petitioner in the case.

"All these people who collaborated were rehabilitated in a big way. R.K. Raghavan was made the high commissioner," Sibal told the bench of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravi Kumar.

He said call data records (CDR) indicated that Pandey was sitting in the police control room as the bodies of the kar sevaks burnt alive in the Godhra train fire were brought to Ahmedabad to stoke passions, and the violence erupted.

"He was sitting in his office all day long. He was not doing anything. If he (were) so concerned, would he have allowed the bodies to be brought by road from Godhra to Ahmedabad and allowed passions to flare up?" Sibal said.

"…P.C. Pandey was one of the worst collaborators. He later became the DGP of Gujarat. The journey from accused to DGP is disconcerting."

Sibal had on Wednesday argued that the way the charred bodies were allowed to be brought to Ahmedabad in a procession was proof enough of a conspiracy involving the top echelons of the administration.

As on Wednesday, he accused the SIT of shielding the accused despite possessing materials such as CDR that allegedly suggested certain police officers collaborated with mobs in identifying the houses of Muslims, and tapes of purported sting operations.

Sibal alleged the SIT had ignored evidence of hate speeches and inflammatory slogans to absolve the accused.

"The SIT was rendering conclusions contrary to facts that they were aware of. In fact, the SIT should be investigated. I'm not concerned with individuals, I'm concerned with the process. I'm only saying the SIT did not do its job --- it did a collaborative exercise," Sibal said.

He said details of landline calls, including the frantic calls made by Ehsan Jafri as a mob attacked his home, had been destroyed.

"Under whose instructions were Jafri's phone calls destroyed? It was nothing but a calculated design to shield and not to punish," Sibal said.

He said the administration had ignored state intelligence reports about the possibility of violence by the kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya.

Sibal also quoted an alleged statement by Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi --- that the rioters had police support --- to a purported sting operation by the Tehelka news portal.

He said Tehelka journalist Ashish Khetan, who had conducted the purported sting, was made a prosecution witness in the Naroda Patiya massacre but not in the Gulbarg Society case.

The trial court had treated the Tehelka tapes as admissible evidence while convicting some of the accused in the Naroda Patiya case.

The arguments will resume on Tuesday.