SIT provides 2002 Guj riots probe report to Zakia Jafri

A week after the Supreme Court order, the wife of slain ex-Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was Wednesday given a copy of preliminary report of the Special Investigation Team which probed her complaint against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others, and gave clean chit to them in the post Godhra riots.

The report was prepared by A K Malhotra, a member of the SIT

Following the apex court order, SIT also submitted two reports of Himanshu Shukla -- investigating officer in the case -- to a court in Ahmedabad. Copies of these reports were handed over to lawyers of Zakia Jafri by metropolitan magistrate B J Ganatra.

Upon receiving the three reports, advocate S M Vora, who appeared for Zakia, requested the court to grant time to verify whether material supplied to them were in conformity with the apex court order or not.

The magistrate, while accepting Vora's plea, fixed February 18 as the next date of hearing.

Following submission of the closure report, which absolved Modi and others of any complicity in the post-Godhra riots, Zakia had sought the preliminary report submitted by Malhotra on May 12, 2010 to the apex court in a sealed envelope.

The metropolitan court had turned down her request to obtain a copy of the report. During proceedings, the court had also rejected Zakia's plea to file a protest petition against the closure report on the grounds of delay.

She had challenged these decisions before the Supreme Court which, on February 7, set aside the lower court's orders and directed SIT to supply the entire inquiry report to her.

"We clarify that the petitioner (Zakia) is entitled to entire inquiry report placed in sealed envelope before this court on May 12, 2010," a Supreme Court bench had said.

While submitting the three reports, SIT Wednesday requested the court to restrain Zakia and her counsels from using these materials "elsewhere".

"Necessary orders may please be passed by this court directing complainant (Zakia) and her counsels to restrict the use of the reports only in these proceedings and nowhere else as the same may affect impartial and just decision in the matter," special public prosecutor R S Jamuar said, citing the apex court order.

The apex court, in its ruling, had made it clear that "the present order is confined to the case in which the complaint was filed by Zakia on June 8, 2006" in which she had sought inquiry against Modi and others with regard to the 2002 riots.

Zakia's husband and 68 others were killed by a mob which had attacked Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002, a day after the Godhra train carnage.

Over four years later, she had filed a criminal complaint against Modi and 58 others, including bureaucrats, alleging their complicity in the violence in which over 1,000 people were killed.