Teesta told to hand in donations for Gulberg

Mar 04, 2013 |

Age Correspondent

mumbai

The surviving members of the Gulberg Society at Ahmedabad have written a letter to activist Teesta Setalvad, warning her that they would take legal action against her if she fails to distribute the donation she had collected in the name of rebuilding the society.
More than 69 members of the Gulberg Society were killed on February 28, 2002, during the 2002 Gujarat riots, when a Hindu mob had attacked the society, a Muslim neighbourhood in Chamanpura, Ahmedabad.
A month after the incident, an NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), was formed as a response to the killings during the Gujarat riots.
The letter states that secretary of CJP Teesta Setalvad has allegedly collected donation from several national and international organisations for the reconstruction of the Gulbarg Society and/or for developing the society into a museum in remembrance of the riots.
They have also asked her to state as to how much money had been collected by her and as to why she has not distributed the money to them or done anything with it.
The letter alleges that as per the RTI information, Teesta has collected `63 lakhs under the banner of the CJP and `88 lakhs under the banner of Sabrang Trust. However, neither has there been any development in the society, nor have the surviving members received any money. “Teesta has been collecting the fund in our name, for our betterment. However we have received nothing from the fund. As she has been collecting funds on the name of Gulberg Society, we are entitled to the funds collected. We have given her some time to respond to our letter. But we will serve her with a legal notice if she does not respond to it,” said Mohamad Sharif Shaikh, resident of Gulberg Society.
Teesta Setalvad for the past 11 years has been organising programmes on February 28 as a mark of solidarity to the people who lost their lives during the 2002 post-Godhra riots. During the events, she has raised funds for rebuilding the society and creating an international museum there but even though a corpus of `1.3 crores has been collected nothing has come of it.
The 15 surviving members have also written a letter to the commissioner of police, Ahmedabad seeking a ban on the NGOs.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/224583" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-6bd7054ee000ce0bea3ec4cae76be980" value="form-6bd7054ee000ce0bea3ec4cae76be980" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85353528" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>