The Gujarat High Court has ordered a fresh investigation into the alleged rioting and murders at Kalol in the Panchmahals district during the 2002 communal riots.
Judge Akil Kureshi ordered that an officer not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police investigate the matter and submit a supplementary charge sheet, preferably within four months. However, he rejected a plea for handing over the probe to the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team. The SIT has been entrusted with re-investigating nine of the more heinous incidents of massacres.
The High Court order came on a revision petition filed by five persons, who claimed to be victims at Kalol , and the State government challenging the order of the Godhra sessions court which earlier rejected their application for a fresh probe. Justice Kureshi also ordered suspension of the hearing of the case in the Godhra sessions court until the police completed the re-investigation.
It was claimed that though there were several incidents of rioting and murder at Kalol on the fateful February 28, 2002, when the entire State was burning, the police failed to investigate the matter properly and a charge sheet was filed in the Godhra sessions court without including some of the accused named by the witnesses.
The victims, who claimed that at least two persons were murdered by the rioters, alleged that initially the police did not even accept the first information report on several incidents and later clubbed all cases together in one FIR and submitted a single charge sheet.
Deepda Darwaja case
Meanwhile, the Mehsana special court — holding the trial of the Deepda Darwaja massacre case in Visnagar, in which at least 11 people were burnt alive — ordered the inclusion of two BJP leaders as accused. The then MLA, Prahlad Gosa, and a member of the taluk panchayat, Dahyabhai Patel, were named by several witnesses as having been among the riotous mob and also as inciting it to torch the houses of minorities. The witnesses claimed that when the victims went to the police station to register a complaint, the two BJP leaders were present there and pressured the police not to include their names.
In another development, the Central Bureau of Investigation, probing the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, has taken up the case of Tulsi Prajapati, who was also gunned down by the State Anti-Terrorist Squad, then headed by the arrested IPS officer, D.G. Vanzara, in a joint operation of the Gujarat and Rajasthan police.
Prajapati, believed to be the “third person” abducted by the State police from a bus along with Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi in Andhra Pradesh, was killed in another encounter about a year after the killing of Sohrabuddin. Prajapati was believed to be a witness to the Sohrabuddin encounter and elimination of Kausarbi.
A senior officer of the CBI arrived here and held discussions with the team probing the Sohrabuddin case. A team of the CBI also visited Illol, native village of Mr Vanzara in Sabarkantha district, where the remains of Kausarbi were alleged to have been disposed of after she was eliminated on one of the farm houses near Gandhinagar.
