The Gujarat High Court today rejected the petition filed by Zakia Jafri challenging a lower court order upholding the special investigation team's clean chit to the then chief minister Narendra Modi and other bureaucrats in the 2002 Gujarat riots case.
The court rejected Zakia Jafri's plea on allegations of "a larger conspiracy" behind the riots.
Zakia Jafri is the wife of slain former MP Ehsan Jafri, who was among 68 people who were killed at the Gulberg Society when a mob attacked it on February 28, 2002, a day after the Godhra train burning incident which set off riots in the state.
She and activist Teesta Setalvad's NGO Citizen for Justice and Peace had moved the criminal review petition against a magistrate's order upholding the clean chit given by the SIT to Modi and others regarding the allegations of a "larger criminal conspiracy" behind the riots.
The petition demanded that Modi and 59 others -- including senior police officers and bureaucrats -- be made accused for allegedly being part of a conspiracy which facilitated the riots. The SIT submitted before the high court that its probe was conducted under the Supreme Court's watchful eye, and its report was largely accepted by all. Jafri's lawyer Mihir Desai argued in the high court that the magistrate, while accepting the SIT's closure report, did not even consider other options such as rejecting the report or ordering a fresh probe.
In 2016, a special court in Ahmedabad convicted 24 attackers for the massacre that the court had described as the "darkest day in the history of civil society". The verdict was seen as setback for Ehsan Jafri's wife.
