This Article is From Mar 03, 2012

Court rejects Zakia Jafri's plea to make SIT report public

Court rejects Zakia Jafri's plea to make SIT report public
Ahmedabad: A Metropolitan Magistrate Court today rejected the plea filed by 2002 Gujarat riot victim Zakia Jafri to open the final report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT). Ms Jafri had filed a plea application, requesting the court that the report should be taken out of the sealed cover and its content made public.

The final report on the post-Godhra riot cases by the SIT was submitted in a sealed cover to the trial court as directed by the Supreme Court.   

The court had earlier deferred its order on Ms Jafri's petition to get access to a copy of the report. The court had asked the SIT, probing the post-Godhra riots, to furnish all documents on which it has based its final report on Ms Jafri's complaint against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in the 2002 Gulbarg Society massacre case.

The SIT has till March 15 to submit the complete set of papers; it had told the court that it would need that time to submit the additional documents, which it said were bulky and ran into thousands of pages and that it needed time to collate and submit these.

The court had earlier rejected the petitions of social activists Teesta Seetalvad and Mukul Sinha, who had asled for copies of the report.

The SIT has been appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate post-Godhra riot cases in Gujarat in 2002.

Ms Jafri is the wife of former Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri, who was among 69 people allegedly burnt alive by a rioting mob on February 28, 2002 at the Gulbarg Housing Society in Ahmedabad where the Jafris lived. Ms Jafri alleges that when the mob attacked, her husband made frantic calls to the police and even to the Chief Minister's office for help but to no avail. For many years now Ms Jafri has taken her legal battle against chief minister Narendra Modi and 62 other senior government functionaries from court to court.
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