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Deeply disappointed, says Congress on Supreme Court verdict on 2002 riots
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the SIT clean chit to 64 people, including PM Modi, in the 2002 Gujarat riots case, holding that the Zakia Jafri’s plea was devoid of merit and tried to create sensation by making false revelations
NEW DELHI: The Congress on Monday expressed disappointment over the Supreme Court verdict dismissing the petition by Congress leader Ehsan Jafri’s widow Zakia Jafri and upholding upheld the special investigation team’s clean chit to 64 people, including PM Modi, in the 2002 Gujarat riots case.
“The Supreme Court judgment in the Zakia Jafri case is deeply disappointing…We stand by our colleague, the late Ehsan Jafri (Zakia Jafri’s husband and the then Congress MP) and his family in this hour,” senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said in a statement.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the SIT clean chit to 64 people, including PM Modi, in the 2002 Gujarat riots case. The court dismissed a plea by Zakia Jafri, stating that it was “devoid of merit and tried to create sensation by making false revelations”.
Ehsan Jafri was among 68 people killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre on the first day of the riots in 2002.
“Was Shri Narendra Modi not the chief minister of Gujarat when the horrific riots took place in 2002? Why was PM (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee so affected by his lack of action that he had to publicly remind him to do his duty, to follow his‘ Rajdharma’?” Congress asked stating these questions “will continue to haunt” PM Modi despite the top court’s verdict.
The Congress criticism came on a day Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan alleged that neither Congress president Sonia Gandhi nor any of the top leaders of that party had visited Zakia Jafri to announce their support for her legal battles seeking justice for her husband, according to news agency PTI.
Vijayan also alleged that during the last Gujarat elections, Rahul Gandhi did not utter a single word about Ehsan Jafri or the Gulbarg Society massacre but found time to conduct a “temple tour” across Gujarat.
Leader of Opposition in the Kerala assembly VD Satheesan countered the CPI(M) veteran’s allegations, pointing to a media report quoting Zakia’s son saying that Gandhi met his mother when she visited Gujarat soon after the 2002 riots. “The Chief Minister is telling blatant lies on the issue”, he alleged.
Reacting to the top court’s verdict, Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday said the Gujarat government did everything in its power to control the riots in 2002 and accused opposition parties, ideologically motivated journalists and some NGOs for spreading false allegations against Modi (who was the chief minister in the state in 2002).
Shah said this “trikut” or trio created an ecosystem where they started believing the lies to be true. “But the public sees everything. We have never lost an election in Gujarat. The mandate tells us the public didn’t believe in these lies,” he said.
