A sessions court in Ahmedabad on Thursday deferred till Friday its order on the bail applications of activist Teesta Setalvad and former DGP R B Sreekumar in a case of allegedly fabricating evidence to frame innocent people in 2002 riots cases. The court of Additional Principal Judge D D Thakkar was scheduled to pronounce the order on Thursday, but deferred it till Friday.
The court was earlier scheduled to pronounce the order on their bail pleas on July 26. However, it had said at that time that it would do so on Thursday as the order was not ready. But the court on Thursday deferred the order for the second time this week. The court had last week reserved its order after hearing arguments from the counsels appearing for Setalvad, Sreekumar and the prosecution. The duo are among three accused, the third being former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, in the case. The three accused have been arrested by the city crime branch under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence).
The Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted to probe the case, had told the court that Setalvad and Sreekumar were part of a larger conspiracy carried out at the behest of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel to destabilise the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Narendra Modi. It alleged that at Patel’s behest, Setalvad received Rs 30 lakh after post-Godhra riots in 2002 that was used for the purpose.
Sreekumar was a “disgruntled government officer”, who “abused the process for damning the elected representatives, bureaucracy and police administration of the whole state of Gujarat for ulterior purposes”, the SIT has alleged. They also tutored witnesses, it said. Both Setalvad and Sreekumar have denied the allegations made against them.
A first information report (FIR) was registered against them after the Supreme Court last month dismissed the plea filed by Zakia Jafri, whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed during the riots. The plea alleged a “larger conspiracy” behind the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat involving the then chief minister Narendra Modi. The court upheld the SIT’s clean chit to Modi and 63 others.
In its judgment, the Supreme Court observed that, “At the end of the day, it appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create sensation by making revelations which were false to their own knowledge. “The falsity of their claims had been fully exposed by the SIT after a thorough investigation … As a matter of fact, all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceed in accordance with law.” Ehsan Jafri was among the 68 people killed at Ahmedabad’s Gulberg Society during violence on February 28, 2002, a day after the Godhra train burning that claimed 59 lives. The riots that it triggered killed 1,044 people, mostly Muslims. Giving details, the central government had informed the Rajya Sabha in May 2005 that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed in the post-Godhra riots.
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