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AHMEDABAD: Zakia Jafri, wife of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre of 2002, has moved the Supreme Court. Accusing the Special Investigation Team of inaction, Jafri has moved an application seeking the SC to direct the team to submit its report within 30 days. The R K Raghavan-led SIT has been probing the 2002 riots, including the killing of the former Congress MP. "The application was filed on December 15, 2011, in which Jafri and others requested the court to direct SIT to submit the report before the Ahmedabad court as ordered by the SC," said advocate Aparna Bhat, who filed the application for Jafri. In September last year, the SC had refrained from passing any order on an earlier petition filed by Jafri seeking Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's prosecution in the 2002 riots. The court had then directed the SIT to submit its final report on the complaint before a lower court in Ahmedabad. The application filed in December last year said, "It is close to three months since the passing of the judgment by this court but there have been no steps taken by the SIT to the knowledge of the petitioners. The petitioners are anxious about the steps the SIT is planning to take in the matter as there have been varied newspaper reports which indicate that the SIT may actually file a closure report." The application further adds, 'One of the key witnesses in a connected trial [Naroda Patiya] was recently murdered and the petitioners believe it was in connection with the present complaint, as he would in all likelihood have been a key witness in the present case and the SIT had recorded his statement as well. Following the suspicious circumstances under which he was killed, the applicants have assisted eyewitnesses/survivors - anxious about the status of evidence in the Naroda Patiya and related cases, as also their own safety to make specific applications, vis-a-vis protection, to the SIT.' |
| SOURCE: The Times of India |
