Narendra Modi used public funds to bribe lawyers: Mallika Sarabhai

NEW DELHI: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's baiters in civil society and bureaucracy came up with fresh allegations on Sunday to target him. But the efforts suffered a credibility crisis after they provided contending versions of allegations against Modi. It began with danseuse Mallika Sarabhai accusing Modi of using public funds to "bribe her lawyers" to derail proceedings of the PIL filed in the Supreme Court by her on the post-Godhra 2002 riots case.

Sarabhai had filed a PIL in April 2002, in which she contended that the state administration and Modi were complicit in the 2002 riots. "Narendra Modi had called the then State IB chief RB Sreekumar and another IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who was his deputy in SIB at that time and asked them to pay my lawyers 10 lakh to derail the proceedings of PIL filed in the Supreme Court by me," she said. Sarabhai provided to the media, copy of an affidavit allegedly filed by Sreekumar recently before the GT Nanavati and Akshay Mehta Commission probing the riots.

But later Sreekumar distanced himself from the disclosures made by Sarabhai and said the copy of affidavit handed over to media by her was not his. "The copy of affidavit being circulated is not mine. Its content as told by Mallika Sarabhai to media could be true to some extent. I have submitted a 10-page affidavit to the Nanavati Commission, which includes three annexures making it a 63 page document," he said. Challenging the veracity of the affidavit copy, he said: "Was the copy of so-called affidavit circulated to media a certified copy taken out from the Nanavati Commission?"