The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Chairman of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which had investigated the 2002 Gujarat riots cases, to apprise it on whether documents pertaining to the closure report filed in the case of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri’s killing in the riots can be supplied to his wife Zakia Jafri, who is a complainant.
After hearing the submissions of Kamini Jaiswal, counsel for the petitioner, a Bench comprising Justice D K Jain and Justice Madan B Lokur, said, “We direct the Chairman of the SIT to peruse the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the complainant Zakia Jafri and ap rise us on whether the documents which are part of the closure report in the case can be supplied to the complainant or not.” Jaiswal told the Bench, “since the documents were not supplied to me, I had moved an application on which the impugned order was passed.”
Earlier, the SIT, headed by former CBI Director R K Raghavan had probed the riots cases including the Ahmedabad-Gulberg housing society massacre case in which Ehsan Jafri was killed. A trial court in Ahmedabad had on November 27 accepted the closure report filed by the SIT on March 13, 2012 with regard to the case. Zakia Jafri has filed the SLP challenging the order of the trial court rejecting her plea for supply of certain documents relating to the investigation in the case.
She asserted in her petition that Gujarat, through SIT Chairman, had filed a closure report and as per the directions of the apex court, the documents of the investigation collected by the respondent had to be given to the complainant before taking a final decision of such closure report.
Kamini Jaiswal requested the Bench to stay the order of the trial court, but the Bench declined to do so.