The Supreme Court had in April 2009 directed the SIT headed by former CBI director R.K. Raghavan to investigate the charges levelled by Ms Jafri, and it is for this that Mr Modi has now been summoned.
Besides Mr Modi, others mentioned in the long list of 63 persons by Ms Jafri include some state Cabinet colleagues considered close to him at the time of the riots, over 20 other BJP and Sangh Parivar leaders and top civil and police officers who were then at the helm of the administration.
The 14 sections sought to be invoked by Ms Jafri for registration of the FIRs relate to non-bailable cognisable offences such as murder (Section 302 IPC), criminal conspiracy (120B), presence of abettor when offence is committed (114), promoting enmity between different communities (153A), public servants disobeying the law with a purpose of causing injury to other persons (166), furnishing false information (177), obstructing public servants from doing their duty (186), omission from assisting public servants in performing their duty (187), making false statement (199), giving false information about any offence (203), defying places of worship with intent to insult religion of any class (295), deliberate act to outrage religious feelings (295A), uttering words with an intent to wound religious feelings of any person (298) and criminal intimidation (506).
These offences had been listed after sifting available records by her counsel, including four affidavits by the then Additional DGP R B Sreekumar before the Nanavati-Shah commission alleging that the civil and police administration was crippled under instruction from Modi.
These IPC sections had also been culled out on the basis of the report of a “public tribunal” of eminent personalities, including former Supreme Court judges V.R. Krishna Iyer and P.B. Sawant. The tribunal had examined various available documents and statements related to the functioning of the bureaucracy and the police during the riots.
The tribunal also had taken into consideration media statements by Mr Modi during his visit to Godhra on February 27, 2002 after the burning of the Sabarmati Express, in which 58 people had been killed, which triggered the riots, statements made by the CM during the post-Godhra carnage, including his reference to “Newton’s theory that ‘every action has a reaction’.”
By invoking these sections, Ms Jafri had attributed the alleged “culpability” of different offences to different civil and police functionaries, who were supposed to act under the direct control of the CM and his Cabinet colleagues, among whom ministers like Ashok Bhat and J.K. Jadeja had figured prominently, besides then chief secretary G. Subba Rao, home secretary G.C. Murmu, DGP K. Chakarvarthi, then Ahmedabad police commissioner P.C. Pandey and additional commissioner M.K. Tandon.
S.S. Negi