In a case brought by social activist Teesta Setalvad, who was accused of manipulating evidence in the 2002 riot cases, Ahmedabad crime branch filed a FIR against her on Thursday. Justice Samir Dave of the Gujarat High Court withdrew himself from the case on Thursday.
When it was time for the case to be heard, Justice Dave said, ‘Not before me.’
The case will now be assigned to a new judge by the chief justice of the supreme court.
Even though the Supreme Court had granted Setalvad bail following the Gujarat High Court’s denial of relief, a sessions court had last month dismissed her discharge request in the case.
She then filed a petition with the Gujarat High Court asking for the FIR to be dismissed.
In June 2022, Setalvad and two other people—former state director general of police R B Sreekumar and former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt—were detained by the city crime branch on suspicion of fabricating evidence and forging documents in an effort to link Gujarat government officials to the riots cases of 2002.
After the Supreme Court last month rejected Zakia Jafri’s appeal, whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was slain during the riots, a first information report (FIR) was filed against them.
Setalvad was charged with violating many sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including sections 468 (forgery for the purpose of defrauding) and 194 (providing or fabricating false evidence with the goal to get a conviction for a death offence).
In a previous hearing before the sessions court, the state government claimed that Setalvad had written affidavits in the identities of victims to accuse innocent people, including the then-chief minister (now Prime Minister Narendra Modi), senior officers, and ministers.
In her argument, Zakia Jafri claimed that the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat were the result of a ‘larger conspiracy’ involving the then-chief minister, Narendra Modi. The court upheld Modi and 63 other individuals’ exoneration by the SIT.
‘At the end of the day, it appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create sensation by making revelations that were false to their own knowledge,’ the Supreme Court said in its ruling.
‘The falsity of their claims had been fully exposed by the SIT after a thorough investigation…As a matter of fact, all those involved in such abuse of process need to be in the dock and proceed in accordance with law.’
The rioting that took place at Ahmedabad’s Gulberg Society on February 28, 2002, one day after the Godhra train fire that claimed 59 lives, resulted in the deaths of 68 persons, including Ehsan Jafri.
1,044 individuals, predominantly Muslims, were killed in the riots that it started. The Rajya Sabha was notified by the Central government in May 2005 that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims had died in the post-Godhra riots.
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