Bajrangi had called Patel thrice on Feb 28,2002: SIT

The Supreme Court-appointed SIT said on Friday that Bajrangi had made three phone calls on Patel’s mobile phone,reportedly updating the latter on the saffron brigade’s “revenge operations” in the Muslim-dominated pockets of the Naroda Gam area on February 28,2002.

Investigating officer of the Naroda Gam case,Superintendent of Police P L Mal had in January this year recorded statements of Ashish Khetan,Tehelka magazine reporter,in connection with his sting operation on Bajrangi.

“We have appended Khetan’s statements and three unedited CDs that he gave us to the case chargesheet filed on April 30,2009. These documents,along with supporting evidence will be produced as evidence against Patel during the case trial,” Mal said.

While getting candid with Khetan (who posed as a Hindutva researcher),Bajrangi had claimed that he had called up Patel 11 times,updating the latter after each murder that took place in Naroda Gam that day. “A thorough scrutiny of their mobile phone records of February 28,2002,however,reveals that Bajrangi had called up Patel only three times,” said an SIT officer,who did not wish to be identified.

Patel’s mobile phone records,said the SIT,reveal that he was at the Sola Civil Hospital (where the bodies were brought from Godhra in trucks) till around 9 am that day. Patel then went to Naroda,where Bajrangi was leading the rioting mobs.

A total of 11 people were killed in the Naroda Gam rioting. The incident had occurred on a day when the VHP had called for a statewide shutdown as a fallout of the Sabarmati Express carnage a day earlier. Bajrangi was arrested in 2002 for his alleged involvement in the two riot cases and is currently out on bail. Patel ,a murder and rioting accused in the Naroda Gam case,is at present in judicial custody.

In a year-long further investigation in the Naroda Gam case,the SIT examined a total of 450 witnesses.

Of the 31 new accused,whose names opened up in the SIT investigation,30,including Patel and former state minister Dr Maya Kodnani have been arrested. One Vishnu Popat Thakur,a resident of Naroda,continues to be at large.

Patel,who was VHP’s state general secretary during the 2002 mayhem,had left for Godhra in the evening of February 27,2002. He along with one Hasmukh Patel had come back to Ahmedabad with charred bodies of the victims of the ill-fated S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express in the early hours of February 28,2002.