Gandhinagar, Apr 22: A senior police officer in an affidavit before the Supreme Court has implicated Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the post-Godhra communal riots of 2002.
Sanjiv Bhatt, who was posted in the Intelligence Department when the riots took place, said in his affidavit that he attended a meeting on February 27, 2002, during which Modi allegedly asked police officers to be “indifferent” to rioters and to the cries for help from areas under attack, television channels reported.
The Gujarat riots, considered the worst since partition, killed nearly 1,200 people.
In the affidavit, the senior IPS mentions he shared this information with the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the riots, reports said.
He said the SIT did not pay any attention to it, thereby forcing him to directly approach the Supreme Court.
In Delhi, the Congress spokesperson demanded that action should be taken on the basis of Bhatt's affidavit, but the BJP said the matter was sub-judice.
He also said the SIT did not sniff leads that could have nailed Modi's “role” in the riots.
Modi had testified last year that Bhatt was not present at the meeting in question, reports said.
In Kolkata, BJP today said there was ‘no presumption' that the affidavit filed by IPS officer Sanjay Bhatt in the Supreme Court implicating Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the Godhra riots was ‘truthful'.
“An affidavit filed by a police officer, there is no presumption that it is truthful. The job for investigating the truth has been entrusted by the Supreme Court to SIT appointed by it,” BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley told a meet-the-press programme here.
“There are a number of people in Gujarat who are actively working and who are involved in the exercise of discovery of falsehood. So, every time a Supreme Court hearing is fixed or a SIT report is expected, you find this pre-empted by some statements in the media, articles in the media, by an affidavit leaked to the media,” Jaitely said.
He said “I would only appeal to my friends in the press and I cannot be the judge of what truthfully happened. There is a judicial mechanism looking into it, let us leave it to that mechanism.” PTI
