The Supreme Court will hear on November 19, Zakia Jafri’s plea challenging the clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others in the 2002 Gujarat riots case.
Last year, the Gujarat High Court had rejected the petition that alleges a “larger conspiracy” in the riots and had upheld Special Investigation Team’s (SIT) clean chit to top politicians including Modi, who was then chief minister of Gujarat.
In 2012, the report of the Supreme Court monitored SIT had concluded that Chief Minister Narendra Modi took all possible steps to control the riots.
The petition filed by Zakia Jafri and the NGO Citizen for Justice and Peace, run by Teesta Setalvad had challenged the findings of the Supreme Court-appointed SIT and the ruling of a magistrate court that upheld its closure report of 2012.
Zakia Jafri is the widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was among those people massacred at Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002 in the aftermath of the Godhra train carnage.
Zakia’s allegations were investigated by the SIT appointed by the Supreme Court in March 2008.
The top court in April 2009 had asked SIT to look into Zakia’s complaint.
The SIT examined Modi, the then Gujarat chief minister and a year later, submitted a closure report that underlined that there was no “prosecutable evidence” against him.
