There was no “larger criminal conspiracy at the highest level” and no “involvement of the named offenders and their meetings of minds”, the Supreme Court held on 25 June 2022.



In doing so, a three-member bench dismissed an appeal filed by Zakia Jafri, wife of murdered former Congress member of Parliament (MP) Ehsan Jafri, alleging a conspiracy by then chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi and 63 others in the Gujarat riots of 2002, which led to the killings of over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, after 59 Hindus were roasted alive in a train in the town of Godhra.



Jafri died after a burning tyre was hurled around his neck, his hands dismembered and he was burned, according to this account written by his son. The mob that killed him and the others descended on the Gulberg Society, an Ahmedabad Muslim housing colony, right after a visit by a senior city police officer, M K Tandon, on 28 February 2002.



"We don't countenance the submission of the appellant regarding infraction of rule of law regarding investigation and the approach of the Magistrate and the high court in dealing with the final report [of a Special Investigation Team or SIT monitored by the Supreme Court],” said Justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar.

The Supreme Court said that officials of the SIT had “come out with flying colours”. The certainty of the justices on the SIT’s work, however, did not engage with a less certain but key issue: When exactly did Modi as chief minister and home minister learn about the violence at Gulberg Society, the first post-Godhra massacre?



The SIT put this question to Modi on 27 March 2010, under a Supreme Court mandate to probe Zakia Jafri’s complaint about the larger conspiracy behind the Gujarat carnage.


Read more - https://article-14.com/post/-questions-the-special-investigation-team-probing-gujarat-riots-did-not-ask-narendra-modi-in-2010--62ba6436b3e84