New Delhi: Senior BJP leader L K Advani on Sunday described as "most heartening" reports that the Supreme Court appointed SIT has not found any substantial evidence against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the post-Godhra riots.
Putting up a strong defence of the Gujarat Chief
Minister, Advani said in his 60 years of political life he has
not known any of his colleague "so consistently, so viciously
maligned by opponents as Narendra Modi".
Writing in his blog, the former Deputy Prime Minister
said people, who are part of the "demonising campaign" against
Modi, have based their attack on one allegation that Modi did
not stop the riots in Gujarat after the Godhra carnage.
"The most heartening news I have read in a long, long
time" is a report that Special Investigation Team clears Modi
of willfully allowing post-Godhra riots, Advani said.
"The country is eagerly awaiting the full text of the
SIT report to the Supreme Court," he said.
According to a media report, the SIT has cleared Modi
of the charge that he failed to discharge his constitutional
duty to intervene swiftly and stop the communal riots.
When the "calumny campaign" against Modi was at its
peak, Modi was receiving kudos from within India and abroad
for making Gujarat a role mode state for the country "so far
as good and honest governance is concerned."
Advani also said the allegation against Modi was that
after the brutal attack at Godhra on a train returning from
Ayodhya in which 58 kar sewaks were burned to death and riots
broke out in some parts of Gujarat, Modi deliberately allowed
the rioters to run rampage.
He also recalled that the Supreme Court appointed the
SIT headed by former CBI director R K Raghavan to investigate
a petition filed by Zakia Jafri, wife of former Congress MP
Ahsan Jafri, that Modi failed to stop riots.
"The Raghavan team investigated the allegations for
nearly twenty months. In the course of their investigations
the SIT interrogated Narendra Modi personally, and early last
week submitted its report to the apex court," Advani noted.
PTI
