The Gujrat CM has got a clean chit from a Supreme court-monitored panel. Accept it.
Aheinous crime took place in Gulbarg Society in the suburbs of Ahmedabad in Gujarat in February
2002 during the post-Godhra violence. Justice for that crime, that saw former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri falling prey to mob violence, has to be about bringing to book those within that mob. Unfortunately, justice for the real crimes of Gulbarg has been sidetracked by a parallel pursuit for a criminal conspiracy behind the mob violence.
The pursuit of that criminal conspiracy has been muddied further by the politics injected into it, making it a high-stakes game of ‘politics by litigation’. This has since left far behind the prosecution of the perpetrators of the crimes of Gulbarg. The process of justice for the 2002 violence was politicised from the start, with Supreme Court interventions coming as early as 2003. Setting aside all arguments and counter-arguments including misgivings about extraordinary judicial activism, everyone had accepted in good faith that the process set about by the Supreme Court, through the Special Investigation Team constituted by it, was to be the final word on the complaint filed by Ehsan Jafri’s Zakia Jafri alleging a conspiracy. This process, steered by the Supreme
Court-appointed SIT with former CBI Director CK Raghavan at its helm, has since brought closure to a number of cases at varying stages of trial, conviction and sentencing. Having expressed dissatisfaction with the previous agencies, it is incumbent upon those who sought this extraordinary Supreme Court intervention
to stand by the SIT and to accept fully its report. The SIT has delivered an exhaustive 25,000-page closure report on the most high profile of complaints to emerge from the game of ‘politics by litigation’. In
that closure report the SIT has conclusively established that neither was there any political conspiracy at the highest levels of Government to allow the 2002 violence nor was there any will full negligence on the
part of Gujarat’s Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. The SIT did not arrive at this conclusion by merely going through the Chief Minister’s replies during its interrogation of him. Instead, it has based its observations
on a comprehensive body of evidence that it put together which it further put to extensive scrutiny.
A lawyer appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the evidence and provide opinion has further validated that evidence, by agreeing with the SIT’s conclusions on all most all counts barring one. The amicus curiae’s opinion that there may be possible grounds for prosecution of the Chief Minister has been analysed threadbare
in media reports to highlight its many infirmities and speculations. Be that as it may, the SIT’s final closure
report deals with this divergent opinion as well in an exhaustive manner. It calls out every single observation by the amicus curiae. It further puts to logical test every one of the observations, to highlight those that are not supported by facts or laws, to finally conclude that the amicus curiae has erred by relying solely on the fabricated claims of a delinquent police officer with a dubious record. The SIT then finally recommends that there is no case to be made against the Mr Modi. The SIT has prepared this final closure
report after the ‘conspiracy’ theory surrounding the Gulbarg Society case was investigated and re-investigated by it and also after that re-investigation was reviewed independently by the amicus curiae under
the supervision of the Supreme Court at every stage. This level of scrutiny of a sitting Chief Minister is unprecedented and extraordinary by the justice standards of any mature democracy. Hence, it is outrageous to see shallow commentary emerging from the editorial desks of various English-language newspapers and news media outlets. They have not only accused the SIT of lazy logic but have also insinuated unprofessionalism
on the part of Mr Raghavan, and even stooped so far as to launch personal attacks on his family. The bottom line here is that the SIT lead by Mr Raghavan has set the gold standard for how a highly-politicised charge of conspiracy theory must be investigated in an environment of high political stakes. The thorough and
complete nature of this investigation cannot be cast aside just because its outcome
is contrary to what was desired by some. Having demanded this process of the Supreme Court, the NGO activists, their media collaborators and their sponsors
in the Congress have no choice but to accept this outcome, howsoever adverse it may be to their political goals. The SIT was not appointed by Mr Modi. It was appointed by the Supreme Court. The multiple investigations and reviews were not ordered by Mr Modi. They were ordered by the Supreme Court.
This was the process sought by the activists and influenced by a lawyer with well-known sympathies for the activists. Thus, for the activists to now disown the process just because the outcome was not
what they had hoped for all along is both bogus and dishonest. While the investigation into the crimes commited in Gulbarg must go on undistracted and unhindered, one hopes that Ms Jafri and her family accept the reality that there was no political conspiracy leading to the violence in Gulbarg. They
must focus their efforts on finding the real perpetrators of the Gulbarg violence rather than become political pawns in the agenda advanced by activists and their political masters in the Congress. To those in the media who have been dishing out constipated editorials on the SIT report, their inability to digest the report is fully understandable. This is the end of the road for those who have been seeking a conspiracy theory behind the
riots. This outcome was the result of a process that could not have been any more independent or non-partisan, having been steered and supervised by the highest court of the country going far beyond what the
Constitution explicitly provided for. To those who still cannot find closure from this outcome, one can only say that their faith in the Indian Republic is suspect
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