AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Tuesday filed a chargesheet against Mumbai-based activist Teesta Setalvad, retired DGP RB Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in a case of alleged fabrication of evidence related to the 2002 Gujarat riots in an Ahmedabad court.
SIT ACP and investigating officer BC Solanki said the agency filed a 6,400-page chargesheet after documenting testimonies of 100 witnesses. It charges the three under IPC sections 468, 469, 471 (forgery), 194 (fabricating false evidence), 211 (false charge of offence made with intent to injure), 218 (public servant framing incorrect record or writing with intent to save a person from punishment or property from forfeiture) and 120/B (criminal conspiracy).
The FIR was lodged against them by the Crime Branch on the same charges based on a Supreme Court verdict that upheld the clean chit to then CM Narendra Modi, his council of ministers and bureaucrats on their role in the riots.
The Supreme Court early this month granted interim bail to Teesta who was arrested in Mumbai on June 26. However, the septuagenarian former DGP RB Sreekumar and former IPS Bhatt remain behind bars.
The proceedings against the three in this case had started after the SC dismissed the petition of Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who died in an attack on Gulberg Housing Society in Ahmedabad during the riots. Zakia had challenged the clean chit given to the then CM by the SIT probing the riots cases.