Guj court gives more time to Zakia Jafri on SIT report

A local court on Wednesday granted time till October 25 to Zakia Jafri to file a protest petition on the closure report filed by Special Investigation Team giving clean chit to Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in 2002 post-Godhra riots.

"As we have filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking clarification of certain issues related to this case we request that court should grant reasonable time to file us the protest petition against the SIT closure report," submitted advocate S M Vora who represents Zakia in this case.

Acting upon this application Metropolitan Magistrate B J Ganatra while granting the time, directed Zakia to produce the order of the SC, if passed, by October 25 when the next hearing of the case is fixed.

"Looking at the past three orders of this court and line of arguments put forward by SIT it appears that there is an impression that our complaint was only limited to the Gulberg Society massacre, where in fact we had complained about the role of CM and others in state-wide riots," said Vora.

"This has prompted us to move to the Supreme Court to seek clarification that its order pertaining to Zakia's case is not only restricted to Gulberg Society case but is applicable to state-wide riots," he added.

Though the Supreme Court-appointed SIT has strongly objected the prayer of granting more time to Zakia on the ground that the apex court has not granted any stay on the proceedings of this court and hence Zakia should be asked to promptly file her protest petition.

The SIT, after investigating the complaint filed by Zakia against Narendra Modi and others, had submitted its closure report on February 8 this year, absolving all of them of any wrongdoings in post-Godhra riots where more then 1,200 people had lost their lives.

The Supreme Court in its order had told the SIT to submit its final report in the local court in Ahmedabad and given complainant Zakia liberty to file a protest petition against the closure report filed by the investigating agency.