Supreme Court upholds SIT clean chit to PM Modi

The Supreme Court has upheld the clean chit given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the Special Investigation Team in the 2002 Gujarat riots case.

It is known that Zakia Jafri had filed a petition in the apex court challenging the clean chit by SIT to the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 63 others for their alleged role in the violence. However, the top court dismissed the petition and said that Jafri’s petition was motivated and prompted by directions from “some others”.

The bench comprising Justice Khanwilkar, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice CT Ravikumar, passing the order, said that they supported the decision of the Gujarat High Court, accepting the judgment of the SIT and rejecting the petition.

Kapil Sibal, who appeared for Zakia Jafri, told the top court that the SIT did not conduct an investigation but did a collaborative exercise and its probe was fraught with omissions to protect conspirators. He also said that officials of the SIT as well as the police were rewarded handsomely.

The SC, however, said, “In the name of a plea (running into 514 pages), the appellant was also indirectly questioning the decisions rendered by the courts in other cases, including sub-judice matters, for reasons best known to her. She was obviously doing so under dictation by someone. In fact, the sizeable content of the protest petition was based on the affidavits filed by those persons and was found to be replete with falsehoods.”