SIT lawyer defends closure report on Zakia Jafri's complaint

The lawyer of the Supreme Court- appointed special investigation team today defended in the Gujarat High Court its closure report regarding the 2002 riots whjch gives a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others.
The High Court is hearing a petition filed by Zakia Jafri -- whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed in the riots -- against the magistrate's order upholding the SIT report.
Senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan, the SIT lawyer, argued before Justice Sonia Gokani that no new material was produced by Jafri before the magistrate warranting further probe.
"The investigation was monitored by the Supreme Court. It also appointed amicus curaie to look into the reports (of SIT).

"Amicus curaie suggested further investigation. SIT made further investigation and submitted its reports. The reports were again looked into by the amicus," he said.
The apex court had considered the SIT investigation as fair and honest and directed it to submit the final (closure) report to the magistrate, Vaidyanathan said.

"The second report of the amicus curaie was only limited to hate-speeches (by some leaders) and was not in reference of larger conspiracy behind the riots," the SIT lawyer said.
Earlier, Jafri's lawyer Mihir Desai said the magistrate wrongly held that he had no powers to treat Jafri's 'protest petition' against SIT report as a complaint. He should have ordered further probe on her complaint, Desai said.

Jafri had filed a complaint in the SC alleging that Modi, the then Gujarat Chief Minister, and 62 others including ministers, police officials and BJP leaders were part of a wider conspiracy behind the riots.
SIT gave a clean chit to all of them in the report filed before the magistrate here in February 2012.