Court defers Zakia Jafri plea for SIT report copy on Modi

A metropolitan court in Ahmedabad on Wednesday rejected pleas seeking copies of the Special Investigation Team's final report regarding Zakia Jafri's complaint saying it would decide on them only after all related documents are submitted by the probe agency.

Passing the order, magistrate M S Bhatt said at this stage all applications seeking copies are disallowed and the SIT is being given time till March 15 to submit the remaining documents related to the report which it had earlier submitted in the court. He said these pleas would be only decided after the complete SIT report is submitted in the court.

The applications for seeking copies were filed by Zakia Jafri, Teesta Setalwad, activists Mukul Sinha of Jan Sangarsh Manch and one of Gulburg Society riot victims.

On Wednesday, Zakia's advocate S M Vora filed another application seeking that the report which is in the sealed cover be opened in court and its contents be read out. SIT counsel R S Jamuar opposed this application. The court has kept hearing on this application on February 29.

The report was submitted in a sealed cover to the court by the Supreme Court appointed the SIT on February 8. It reportedly gives a clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 56 others on the ground that there is no "prosecutable evidence" against them.

The Supreme Court, which set up the SIT, had asked it to investigate whether there was a larger conspiracy behind the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, in which more than 1,200 people were killed.

A complaint had been filed by Setalvad and Zakia Jafri in connection with the Gulburg Society incident during the riots, where 69 people including Zakia's husband and former Congress member of Parliament  Ehsaan Jafri were killed.

The SIT questioned several people, including Modi, and filed the first report in the Supreme Court, supposedly giving a clean chit to the CM. The apex court then asked senior lawyer Raju Ramchandran to independently assess the SIT report.

On September 12, 2011, after going through Ramchandran's report, the Supreme Court did not record any finding, but asked the SIT to submit its final report to the magistrate's court in Ahmedabad.

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