The Gujarat High Court order on the petition of late Congress MP Ahsan Jafri’s widow Zakia Jafri has said that one of the main pillars of allegations of a larger conspiracy in the 2002 post-Godhra riots has “crumbled” following the Supreme Court’s decision on former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt. “Much water has flown, as discussed at length, and one of the main pillars of the Protest Petition of Sanjiv Bhatt’s evidence has crumbled in wake of the decision of the apex court,” Justice Sonia Gokani wrote in the order pronounced on Thursday. The order was made available on Friday. Ahsan Jafri was killed in the Gulberg Society massacre in Ahmedabad during the 2002 post-Godhra riots. Bhatt had claimed in the affidavit, filed nine years after the riots, that he was present in a meeting on February 27, 2002, at then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s residence. In its 2015 order, the SC had dismissed Bhatt’s petition seeking an independent probe into the FIR lodged at Ghatlodia police station, Ahmedabad, by police constable K D Panth. Panth had alleged that he was forced to sign on an affidavit prepared by Bhatt to prove that the latter was present in the meeting at Modi’s residence. Justice Gokani observed that the apex court order revealed “how the unholy nexus of certain officers with certain other planners led to the apex court dismissing the petition of forming SIT for investigating into the crime registered at Ghatlodia police station.” The court said, “His (Bhatt’s) handshakes with various agencies to influence the SIT and course of justice in the case of Ms Jafri also exponentially revealed the extent to which everything was planned. Various observations made by the amicus curiae in relation to presence of Bhatt in the meeting held by the then Chief Minister on 27.02.2002 have been quoted, in fact, in extenso in the order impugned..”
