Gujarat riots: SC allows Zakia to file fresh plea

The Supreme Court yesterday allowed Zakia Jafri to file a fresh protest petition in a trial court against the special investigation team's closure report apparently exonerating Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and others in a 2002 riot case in Ahmedabad in which her husband and ex-Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed.

Zakia Jafri has accused Modi and others of abdicating their constitutional duty in the Gulburga Housing Society incident during the anti-Muslim riots following the Godhra train massacre. The apex court asked a Gujarat trial court not to pronounce its final order on the closure report of the SIT.

An Ahmedabad trial court had on 27 November accepted the SIT closure report filed on 13 March 2012 in the case.

The Supreme Court also issued notice to the Gujarat government seeking its response on the plea of Zakia Jafri seeking documents relating to the SIT probe. The court had passed the order relating to supply of documents to Zakia Jafri on 12 September 2011.

The apex court again directed that the widow be supplied with entire report of the inquiry by the SIT to enable her to file the protest petition.

It clarified that the report shall be supplied without the comments of the SIT chief and she can file a protest petition within two months from the date of receiving the material against the SIT's closure report in the case in which 69 people, including her husband, were killed by a mob on 28 February 2002.