Godhra riots: SC clean chit to Modi

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the SIT’s clean chit to the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and 63 others in the 2002 communal riots in the state, saying there is no “tittle of material” to show the violence after the Godhra train carnage was “pre-planned” owing to the criminal conspiracy allegedly hatched at the “highest level” in the state.

Observing that inaction or failure of some officials of one section of the administration cannot be the basis to readily infer a pre-planned criminal conspiracy by the authorities or to term it as a state-sponsored crime against the minority community, the court dismissed a plea by slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri’s wife Zakia, terming it as “devoid of merits”.

Bringing the curtains down on the bid to reopen the probe into the 2002 riots, a bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar also spoke of “the devious stratagem to keep the pot boiling, obviously, for ulterior design”, and said disgruntled officers of the Gujarat government need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law for creating a sensation by making false revelations. Alleging a larger conspiracy behind the mass violence against Muslims, Zakia had challenged the Gujarat High Court’s October 5, 2017 order rejecting her petition against the finding of the Supreme Court-appointed SIT. The bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar, held that the material collected during the investigation does not “give rise to strong or grave suspicion regarding hatching of larger criminal conspiracy at the highest level”.