A group of activists will mark the tenth anniversary of the Godhra carnage and the ensuing communal riots in Gujarat at the memorial at Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28.
The Supreme Court Tuesday said it would hear on October 26 a plea filed by Zakia Jafri, the wife of slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri, challenging the Special Investigation Team (SIT) clean chit to Narendra Modi, who was the Gujarat chief minister during the 2002 riots in the state.
The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday fixed for hearing on April 13 the plea of Zakia Jafri, wife of slain member of Parliament Ehsan Jafri, challenging the SIT's clean chit to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots, saying it would not entertain any request of adjournment on the next date.
'There appears to be no end to the errors that our leaders are willing to commit and no risk they are unwilling to run,' notes Mihir S Sharma.
The court said that the petitioner can approach a higher court for further investigation in the case.
Terming the 2002 incidents of Godhra and subsequent riots as a "national tragedy of gargantuan proportions", Sibal said the petitioner is concerned with how the majesty of the law will deal with such issues when men "behave like animals".
Pleading for maximum punishment, the prosecution said capital punishment could be considered by the court or the convicts be sent to jail and ordered to remain there till their last breath.
'They don't want anybody to stand up and support the vulnerable sections of society who may be targeted.'
There was no material to substantiate claims of any larger conspiracy in the 2002 Gujarat riots and the idea behind alleging that the violence was state-sponsored is to keep the 'pot boiling' which showed 'sinister signs,' the special investigation team told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
'We are losing the battle of secularism, but we have not lost.'
On Monday, prosecution had sought death penalty for all the 24 people convicted for the gruesome killings.
The bench said it will look into the application before hearing the matter on making Setalvad as the second petitioner in Jafri's plea.
The government may ask the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the alleged transfer of funds by the Ford Foundation to activist Teesta Setalvad's Sabrang Communication and Publishing Pvt Limited.
A special trial court in Gujarat on Friday acquitted all six accused in the 2002 post-Godhra riots case in which three British nationals and their Indian driver were killed at Prantij town in Gujarat's Sabarkantha district, for want of evidence against them.
However, her son Tanveer Jafri said there was definitely 'some sense of closure' at the convictions but it would have to be seen why some of the accused were not convicted.
Zakia, the wife of Ehsan Jafri, an ex-MP who was killed in one of the worst incidents during the riots, has challenged the Gujarat high court's October 5, 2017 order rejecting her plea against the SIT's decision.
'The SIT did not follow up with the CD of the phone call recordings that could have helped it find who were leading the mobs and where the calls of people involved in the rioting originated from and terminated.'
A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Deepak Gupta said the matter will be heard on November 19, as the court has not gone through the petition in detail.
Kin of the 2002 Gulberg Society massacre victims and eye-witnesses on Saturday contested a special court's conclusion that firing by former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri acted as a catalyst for mob fury.
'I don't think there is a need to order a fresh investigation into the complaint against Modi & Co. As the amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran said in his report to the Supreme Court, the existing material is more than sufficient to prosecute Modi and other high-ups of his regime,' Manoj Mitta, author of the book The Fiction Of Fact-Finding: Modi and Godhra tells Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore.
'Little about this regime, given its vindictive credo, is a complete surprise. But we were still taken aback by the CBI raid as it was a complete abuse of due process.' 'These are not legal inquiries, but abusive use of State power. They are not legitimate investigations, but a witch-hunt.' 'Ours is a typical, classic case of the State and its organs being used as an outlet for motivated vendetta of the vilest kind.'
A day after an Ahmedabad court accepted the Special Investigation Team's closure report giving clean chit to Narendra Modi in the Gulberg Society massacre case, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday demanded an apology from the Congress for carrying out a "vilification campaign" against him after the Gujarat riots.
'Will this communal pendulum, which is swinging towards the extreme of division and violence, ever swing back to its position of the '60s and '70s within my lifetime?' 'Or will my children, and their children, have to continue to suffer the consequences of the country, that we all love, torn apart along communal lines,' asks Najid Hussain in anguish.
'I fight for anyone who is poor, marginalised or victimised.' 'If a Dalit factory owner is inflicting atrocities on his Brahmin worker, then I will fight for the poor Brahmin.'
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