Victims expect little from Modi call

Victims expect little from Modi call

Ahmedabad, March 12: Gujarat riot victims today sounded sceptical about the summons sent to Narendra Modi by the Supreme Court-created special investigation team (SIT), saying they feared the questioning of the chief minister would be nothing more than an “eyewash”. Modi, against whom there is no FIR yet, has been asked to appear before the SIT in Gandhinagar on March 21 for questioning over the Gulbarg Housing Society carnage of February 28, 2002, in which Congress leader Ahsan Jafri and 68 others were slain. “What we are going to witness on March 21 is a high-voltage drama when the chief minister appears before the SIT to respond to allegations levelled against him by various witnesses. That is it. It is going to be an eyewash,” said Mukhat Ahmad, a riot victim-turned-rights activist. Ahmad has two concerns. First, the composition of the SIT. Second, he said, the manner in which the team has carried out its probe so far, which smacks of the line of investigation adopted by the Gujarat police which avoided the conspiracy angle. Mukul Sinha, a lawyer representing riot victims, said what remained to be seen was whether the SIT would look at the Gulbarg Society case as an isolated incident or as a larger issue taking into account the collapse of the civil administration and the possibility of a conspiracy to engineer riots. “There is evidence to show that the attacks on Naroda Patia, Naroda Gam and Gulbarg, which fall under one police zone, were co-ordinated and part of a larger conspiracy,” said Sinha. The SIT, headed by former CBI chief R.K. Raghavan, was set up by the Supreme Court in May 2009 in the wake of allegations that the way a top state police team was probing the riot cases was less than satisfactory. Ahmad said that for some reason, the SIT had chosen to retain in its team Noel Parmar, the investigating officer in the Godhra train fire case. Parmar was granted four extensions by the state government, which, many say, was a reward for toeing the government line and coming up with a “conspiracy” theory. It was only after an uproar from rights groups that Parmar was dropped from the SIT. Rights groups are also apprehensive about the constitution of the SIT, which has three Gujarat-cadre IPS officers. “They should not have been there because there were serious allegations against the Gujarat police,” Sinha said. Shivanand Jha, now Surat police commissioner, was posted in Ahmedabad during 2002. A large number of Muslim properties were destroyed in the area under his jurisdiction. Ashish Bhatia, who was joint commissioner, Ahmedabad, at the time of the riots, is also on the panel.