Zakia`s witnesses hold grudge against Modi govt: SIT

Lawyer of the SIT which probed the Godhra train burning incident and the riots thereafter, Friday claimed that all witnesses relied upon by Zakia Jafri held a grudge against the Gujarat government.

Ahmedabad: Lawyer of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) which probed the Godhra train burning incident and the riots thereafter, Friday claimed that all witnesses relied upon by Zakia Jafri held a grudge against the Gujarat government.

"IPS officers like R B Sreekumar, Sanjeev Bhatt and Rahul Sharma, on whom complainant Zakia Jafri relies as prime witnesses, were either suspended or denied promotions or held grudge against the state government," SIT`s advocate R S Jamuar claimed in his replies to issues raised by Zakia Jafri in her petition. All three IPS officers, who came out in the open against the Gujarat government on different occasions after the 2002 riots, had faced departmental actions. While R B Sreekumar was denied his promotion as DGP, but was granted it after he approached the Central Administration Tribunal (CAT), Sharma was chargesheeted by the Gujarat home department for not submitting a CD containing call details record (CDR) of phone calls made during riots. Similarly, IPS official Sanjeev Bhatt, who faces trial in a case of custodial death in Jamnagar district, has been suspended by the Gujarat government. Jafri, whose husband and ex-Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed in a mob attack on Gulbarg Society during the 2002 post-Godhra riots, has filed a petition protesting a SIT report giving a clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others for their alleged role in the riots. She has also demanded that the SIT report should be rejected and that Modi as well as others should be chargesheeted. PTI