Mumbai-based activist Teesta Setalvad has denied tutoring the witnesses of the 2002 post-Godhra riots.Setalvad’s former associate Rais Khan Pathan has alleged that she had tutored the witnesses of some of the riots following the killing of 58 kar sewaks in the Sabarmati Express fire at Godhra on February 27, 2002. Pathan has filed complaints regarding these with city Police Commissioner too.
Addressing a Press conference here on Monday, Setalvad said that all the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) have done is to prepare the witnesses to face the courts. The CJP had provided quality legal aid to the witnesses in the 2002 riots cases, she said.
Seeking to claim credit for the convictions in the riot cases in which verdicts have already been delivered, Setalvad said that the trials could come to their logical conclusions not due to the State Government’s efforts but because of constant monitoring by the Supreme Court and the NGO activists.
Till now, as many as 116 people have been sentenced to life imprisonment for their roles in the 2002 riots in Naroda Patiya, Sardarpura, Best Bakery, Ode, Dipda Darwaza and other places, she informed.
The trials in the Naroda Gam (village) and Gulbarg Society massacre cases are pending in the lower courts. Former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri was among the 69 people killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre.
Meanwhile, a Magisterial court on Monday allowed Ahsan Jafri’s widow Zakiya Jafri to file her protest petition against the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team’s (SIT) closure report on the Gulbarg Society massacre.
In her reply to the SIT’s application in the Metropolitan Magistrate, Zakia Jafri has alleged that the delay of one year in the Gulbarg Society massacre trial was on account of the SIT’s ‘adversarial and hostile’ attitude towards her.
The ‘hostile’ attitude of the SIT amounts to intimidation of a complainant and is not conducive to the healthy conduct of proceedings where prosecution of high and mighty accused are involved, Zakia’s reply to the Metropolitan Magistrate said.
