A day after the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots case, the Gujarat anti-terror squad ATS arrested Mumbai-based activist Teesta Setalvad on Saturday. The arrest also came hours after Union Minister Amit Shah’s said in an interview that an NGO run by Setalvad had given the police unsubstantiated information regarding the riots in Gujarat. “The NGO that was being run by her,” Shah said, “had given baseless information about the riots to the police.”
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The FIR against Setalvad and two others --- former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt and former DGP RB Sreekumar --- followed the apex court’s observation that some people kept “the pot boiling” of the case “for ulterior design” and “all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with the law."
What’s significant is that the FIR draws heavily from the apex court’s 452-page judgement that dismissed the plea by Zakia Jafri, the widow of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed along with dozens of others in Gulberg Society of Ahmedabad during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Zakia Jafri’s plea, in which the activist Teesta Setalvad was a co-petitioner, had challenged the Supreme Court-appointed SIT’s clean chit to Modi, alleging that the investigation had overlooked evidence.
Several SIT submissions regarding Sreekumar, Bhatt and Setalvad, which were placed before the Supreme Court are cited almost verbatim in the FIR. The FIR cites verbatim from the annexure in the Supreme Court verdict that Bhatt, the then DIG, had “sent a letter dated 30.12.2011 to the Secretary, Hon'ble Justice Nanavati & Justice Mehta Commission of Inquiry”.
Similarly, the SIT's findings of the emails exchanged by Bhatt, the Gujarat police and certain individuals co-accused, which found a mention in the SC's ruling, are also cited in the FIR. The judgement summarises the SIT findings with these words: “From the study of emails, it appears that certain vested interests including Shri Sanjiv Bhatt, different NGOs and some political leaders were trying to use Hon'ble Supreme Court/SIT as a forum for settling their scores.”
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However, the FIR says that the SIT’s scrutiny of the emails “establishes that certain vested interests individuals and organisations including Sanjiv Bhat, different NGOs, some political leaders and organisations were hatching a criminal conspiracy to use various forums such as the Honourable Supreme Court, SIT for settling their scores and achieve an unlawful object of implicating innocent individuals in offences punishable with life.”
What is underlined as a possibility in the SC judgment becomes a conclusive statement in the FIR.
The FIR also quotes a passage nearly identically from the judgement where Zakia Jafri admits to having known both Setalvad and Sreekumar. Noting that since Zakia had admitted in her cross-examination that she had no occasion to read the copy of the statement she gave before the Nanavati-Shah Commission on August 22, 2003, the FIR says: “This indicates that she was tutored by Teesta Setalvad.”
