But Gujarat Chief Minister’s critics won’t rest
Ideally, the Ahmedabad Metropolitan court's rejection of Ms Zakia Jafri's plea against the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team's closure report, which gave a clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his alleged role in 2002 violence, should have ended the sordid chapter. It should have been an opportunity for the country to accept the SIT's report as the final word, and it should have been acknowledged as a victory for truth and justice. lastly, it should have also been reason enough for those convinced of Mr Modi's involvement in the 2002 violence to end their long-drawn legal battle. Unfortunately, this will not be the case. Activists with vested interests who have built their entire careers around the ‘Modi-is-a-mass-murderer' movement, and politically motivated NGOs that have spent the past decade running down the three-time popularly elected Chief Minister, are unlikely to shut shop so easily. No, they can be expected to continue, with a vengeance, their campaign of calumny. As Ms Jafri, whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was among 68 people killed in the Gulbarg society massacre, prepares to take her case to a higher court, one can be rest assured that Modi-baiters will keep her company — facts be damned.
In its report submitted to the Supreme Court last April, the SIT made clear that it had found no evidentiary basis to support the claims of Ms Jafri. It also pointed to the fact that since her husband had fired his gun at the group that had gathered outside their housing complex, that one action could have provoked the mob to set Gulbarg Society on fire. This, bleeding heart activists have found impossible to stomach. They have been so blinded by their vitriolic hatred for Mr Modi that they have wilfully ignored inconsistencies in Ms Jafri's statements and allegations (others will argue, and not without reason, that the old lady was manipulated and pressured to continue the battle against Mr Modi). For instance, Ms Jafri had alleged that the Chief Minister had instructed Gujarat officials to allow Hindus to vent their anger over the burning of kar sevaks aboard Sabarmati Express. Yet, her list of officials who were present was factually incorrect. Similarly, other witnesses she had presented were also found to be tainted. It is, therefore, only in the fitness of things that her allegations have been summarily trashed.
From the political perspective, Thursday's judgement is, of course, a tremendous boost for Mr Modi in the run-up to the 2014 lok Sabha election. It also comes on the heels of another legal victory for him — in the Ishrat Jehan fake encounter case. Earlier in the week, the Central Bureau of Investigation conceded that it had found no “prosecutable” evidence against the Mr Modi's former Minister of State for Home Affairs Amit Shah. Perhaps, this explains why the Union Cabinet was in such a tearing hurry to set up an inquiry commission to investigate if Mr Shah had also abused his powers to snoop on a woman on the orders of a certain “saheb”— even though there is already a panel looking into the case. Mr Modi's detractors know that they can't touch him politically and so they thought they could tarnish him legally. They were wrong.