Gujarat’s SC defence: No one told us about the acquittals

In an affidavit filed last week before the Supreme Court to explain its failure to do justice to the post-Godhra riot victims, the Gujarat g...

In an affidavit filed last week before the Supreme Court to explain its failure to do justice to the post-Godhra riot victims, the Gujarat government came up with an array of excuses but one stood out: the state government claimed it learnt of acquittals in the Kidiad massacre case more than a year after the verdict.

In response to amicus curiae Harish Salve’s contention that the riot cases decided so far have mostly resulted in acquittals and the state has not bothered to file appeals against them, the Gujarat government claimed it learnt of the October 2002 acquittal in the Kidiad case — 87 people were allegedly burnt alive in the truck massacre case — only 13 months later on November 21, 2003 after the Supreme Court issued a notice to it on Salve’s application. A Godhra judge had acquitted all the accused in the case.

The state government blamed it on the two special prosecutors it appointed for all the riots cases of Panchmahals district, J G Pathak and B J Trivedi. It claimed that in the cases handled by those two prosecutors, ‘‘there was no reporting, much less intimation, about the acquittals to the legal department.’’

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Within a week of the Supreme Court’s notice, the state said, it sacked the two prosecutors, took ‘‘a conscious decision’’ to file an appeal before the high court and requested the advocate general to appear in it himself. Thus, the state took pains to impress upon the apex court that ‘‘the delay in filing appeal essentially arose due to the non-communication of the said judgment.’’

Equally curious is its explanation for appointing a VHP supporter, Chetan Saha, in June 2003 as the prosecutor for the Gulbarga Society case involving the killing of over 70 persons, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jaffri, and the Naroda Patiya massacre involving the killing of 110 persons, the highest death toll in the riots.

Besides referring to his VHP connection, Salve pointed out that Shah’s appointment provoked a controversy because he was himself once chargesheeted in relation to the murder of nine persons. Although it dropped Shah as well, the state defended his appointment in the first place by pointing out that the FIR against him related to the 1986 riots and that he was acquitted in 1990.

The Modi government also denied Salve’s charge that Shah was responsible for all the 53 accused being on bail. Salve’s charge was based on the fact that prior to his appointment as prosecutor, Shah had appeared and secured bail for over 30 accused in the Gulbarga case. Glossing over his role in the same case as a defence counsel, the state said that Shah can’t be blamed for the bail orders as they were passed before his appointment as prosecutor.

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As regards the Sardarpura massacre, Salve alleged that prosecutor Dilip Trivedi, another VHP activist, did not object to the grant of bail to any of the 54 accused persons.

Again, even though it sacked Trivedi, the state said ‘‘it is not true to state that the bail applications were conceded.’’ This it said was evident from the fact that ‘‘the trial court passed detailed reasoned orders while granting bail.’’

But then, as Salve pointed out, those reasoned orders only demonstrate Trivedi’s negligence. Salve cited an instance of an accused getting bail by falsely claiming that his name did not figure in the FIR. Trivedi did not contest the misrepresentation made by the accused.