SC adjourns hearing on Zakia Jafri’s plea, next hearing on Nov 26

by Abbas Adil

The Supreme Court Monday adjourned till November 26 Zakia Jafri’s petition challenging the acquittal of Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, and several other in the 2002 Godhra riots case. Zakia’s Special Leave Petition (SLP) came up last week before Justices A M Khanwilkar and Deepak Gupta who fixed November 19 as the date for the hearing.
Zakia Jafri is the widow of slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri who was killed by a mob which attacked the Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002.
Zakia Jafri has challenged an October 5, 2017 judgment of the Gujarat High Court which upheld the clean chit given to several politicians and senior bureaucrats by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in its closure report, citing lack of “prosecutable evidence” against them.
The Gujarat High Court, last year, upheld the judgment of the metropolitan court and rejected Zakia’s allegations that cases such as Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gam and Gulberg were part of a “larger conspiracy”. Five years after the Gujarat riots, Zakia had made allegations against Modi and the officers from the state machinery.
In 2012, a metropolitan court acquitted all 58 accused in the post-Godhra riots in which 69 people were killed. “According to the SIT, no offence has been established against any of the 58 persons listed in Zakia’s complaint,” metropolitan magistrate MS Bhatt had then said. The petitioners had then moved the High Court against the acquittal in 2013.

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