A Supreme Court Bench on Monday told Zakia Jafri, widow of the slain Congress leader Ehsaan Jafri, that it could not go into her request seeking certain documents of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) with regard to the Gulberg housing society riots case in Gujarat in 2002.
The Bench comprising Justice D K Jain and Justice Madan B Lokur told advocate Kamini Jaiswal who appeared for Zakia that it would not like to examine the plea of the petitioner as the previous order was passed by a larger Bench.
Justice Jain told the counsel: “Propriety demands that it should go to the same Bench. Moreover, it was a larger Bench. Once a Bench has passed an order, it shall remain in the domain of that Bench.
“I’m a member of that Bench. Two other members are different,” Justice Jain added.
The previous order passed by the Bench of three judges on September 12, 2011 had directed the SIT headed by former CBI director R K Raghavan to forward its final report with regard to the Gulberg society riots case to the local court.
The SIT, on the directions of the apex court, had probed the riot cases including the Gulberg riots case in which as many as 69 people were killed in the Gulberg society on February 28, 2002, including Ehsan Jafri, a former Congress MP.
The trial court in Ahmedabad had accepted the closure report filed by the SIT on March 13, 2012 in the case.
Zakia sought some documents relating to the investigation in the case from the trial court, but the same had been turned down. Challenging it, she has moved the apex court.