At Ahmed Patel's behest, Teesta plotted to destabilise Guj govt: SIT

The Gujarat police on Friday opposed activist Teesta Setalvad's bail application.

She was part of a "larger conspiracy" carried out at the behest of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel to dismiss the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state after the 2002 riots, claimed an affidavit filed by the police's Special Investigation Team before the sessions court.

Additional sessions judge DD Thakkar took the SIT's reply on record and posted the hearing on the bail application on Monday.

Setalvad has been arrested, along with former IPS officers RB Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt, for allegedly fabricating evidence to frame innocent people in Gujarat riots cases.

"The political objective of the applicant (Setalvad) while enacting this larger conspiracy was dismissal or destabilisation of the elected government....She obtained illegal financial and other benefits and rewards from rival political party in lieu of her attempts to wrongly implicate innocent persons in Gujarat," said the SIT's affidavit.

Citing the statements of a witness, the SIT said the conspiracy was carried out at the behest of late Ahmed Patel. At Patel's behest, Setalvad received Rs 30 lakh after post-Godhra riots in 2002, it alleged.

Setalvad used to meet the leaders of a "prominent national party in power at that time in Delhi to implicate names of senior leaders of the BJP government in riot cases," the SIT further claimed.

It cited another witness to claim that Setalvad in 2006 had asked a Congress leader why the party was giving "chance to only Shabana and Javed" and not making her a member of the Rajya Sabha.

Last month, a day after the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given to then chief minister Narendra Modi and others in Gujarat riots case, state police arrested Setalvad.

She, along with Sreekumar and Bhatt, was booked under IPC sections 468 (forgery) and 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence) among other offences.