Court must decide Gujarat government's lapse, says Mihir Desai

AHMEDABAD: It is for the court and not the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) to decide whether the post-Godhra riots of 2002 were a result of the Gujarat government's criminal lapse as part of a larger conspiracy or not, Zakia Jafri's lawyer said here today.

On behalf of Jafri, Advocate Mihir Desai also argued today that the SIT failed to investigate the Gujarat state government's lapses in implementing state government's Police Manual and Communal Riots Scheme of 1997 to deploy the army during the 2002 post-Godhra riots.

"Whether the Gujarat government intentionally failed to take preventive steps or not, or any administrative lapse during riots amounts to criminal lapse or not is something which should be decided by the court and not by the SIT," Desai said.

He made his argument before Metropolitan Magistrate B J Ganatra, on behalf of Zakia Jafri who had filed a petition protesting the closure report of the Supreme Court appointed SIT which, gave a clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others.

She has also demanded that Modi and others should be chargesheeted and the investigation be handed over to another independent agency.

Desai submitted that when an agency, such as the SIT, has been assigned the investigation of large scale violence which, as per allegations, happened as part of a larger conspiracy, it has to probe whether the government could have anticipated such situation.

It also has to probe if the government could not have anticipated such a situation, and if it did anticipate it, what steps the government had taken to prevent it, he said.