The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday demanded an enquiry into what it described as ‘selective leakage' of the purported report submitted to the Supreme Court by the R.K. Raghavan-headed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on the 2002 Gujarat carnage.
Talking to reporters here, chief spokesperson of the party Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that “elements in the government” might have had a role in the publication of the media reports to divert attention from a myriad of problems the government faced.
At the same time, Mr. Prasad maintained that he was not sure of the authenticity of media reports and was in no position to comment on their merits. “I have not seen the SIT report and I am purely going by the media reports.”
The spokesperson argued that the SIT submitted the report in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court and the court always maintained the sanctity of the contents of the reports placed before it.
Mr. Prasad said the Union government recently submitted a list of Indians who had accounts in foreign banks that were considered tax havens, on a direction from the Supreme Court, and till date no one had a clue to those names. “This is the nature of the sanctity attached by the court to the information provided before it.”
The spokesperson contended that contrary to what appeared in a section of the media on the SIT report, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Kumar Modi had visited the Muslim areas affected by the carnage.
In response to a question, Mr. Prasad said that even if the media reports on the SIT were correct, it would not be prudent to jump to any conclusion. He maintained that one had to wait to see what view the Supreme Court would take on the SIT report.
