The Ahmedabad metropolitan court on Saturday issued notices to the Supreme-Court-appointed Special Investigation Team and Zakia Jafri — wife of the former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed in the Gulberg Society massacre here in 2002 — following opposition by the Jan Sangharsh Manch to handing over to her a copy of its application to the SIT and investigation report on the Naroda-Patiya massacre.
The Manch filed its plea during the hearing, in the court of metropolitan magistrate M.S. Bhatt, of Ms. Jafri's plea that she be provided 18 more listed papers which, she had claimed, were “missing” from the pile of documents given to her by the SIT with its closure report.
According to advocate Mukul Sinha, the Manch application to the SIT was specifically on the Naroda-Patiya massacre, in which investigation was still in progress, and the probe report could not be made public at this stage.
The Manch application was filed before the SIT in September 2009, seeking further investigation into the larger conspiracy theory, the role of police officers in the incident and a thorough analysis of two CDs listing details of mobile phone calls made by some important political leaders, officials and police officers during the 2002 communal riots.
While accepting the application then, the SIT did not give any positive response, nor did it submit its final report on the application despite the city sessions court directing it thrice to do so before the metropolitan court. The SIT, however, mentioned the application in its closure report, submitted before the metropolitan court, a copy of which was handed over to the main petitioner, Ms. Jafri, earlier this month.
The metropolitan court has fixed May 25 for the next hearing on the Manch's opposition to Ms. Jafri's request. According to Dr. Sinha, the Manch would again move the sessions court on Monday seeking a direction to the SIT for time-bound submission of its investigation report on the Manch's application.
