The Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday the plea by suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who has sought a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the conspiracy exposing State’s complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots
Bhatt’s lawyers - senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Indira Jaising - appeared before a Bench headed by Chief Justice Hl Dattu to mention the matter and urged for an urgent listing. Accusing the State Government led by the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minster Amit Shah of conspiring in the killing of several innocents in the Gujarat riots, Bhatt in his petition claimed that official mails of the then Additional Advocate General of Gujarat Tushar Mehta were sent to persons outside the system. One of the names in the recipient list was of RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy.
While Tushar Mehta, currently an Additional Solicitor General, is already a party in the case, Bhatt has sought to include Shah and Gurumurthy to his petition, seeking their response in the matter. According to Bhatt, some emails filed by State Government were vetted by Shah and Gurumurthy, which became evident from emails exchanged between Mehta with Shah and Gurumurthy.
Bhatt claimed that he suffered at the hands of the State Government as he chose to spill the beans on the role played by Modi and Shah. According to Bhatt, he attended a meeting with the then Chief Minister where instructions were issued to go slow on the perpetrators of violence allowing them time to avenge for the Hindu deaths.
According to Bhatt, the role of Shah and Gurumurthy explained there was a larger design to subvert justice both in the trial court and Supreme Court, where the riot cases were heard. As a matter of fact, the plea of complicity of Modi in relation to the Gulbarga Society killings involving the death of former Congress MP Ehsaan Jaffri was found to be negative by the SIT formed under former CBI Director RK Raghavan. The Court accepted the report by dismissing the petition by the deceased MP’s wife Jakia to question Modi for conspiring in her husband’s death.