New Delhi, October 12: Taking a cue from the central government stand in the 2G spectrum case, the Gujarat government Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to stop monitoring of the trials in the 2002 communal riots cases by the court-appointed special investigation team (SIT).
The central government had asked the apex court to stop monitoring the main 2G spectrum allocation case as the charge sheet had already been filed by the CBI in the trial court. The government had taken the position that the monitoring should end after the filing of the charge sheet.
The apex court bench of Justice D.K. Jain, Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice Aftab Alam was told by the Gujarat government Tuesday that according to the rules, monitoring should come to an end after the charge sheet was filed.
The court said the trial was being monitored by the SIT for the last two years and there was no change in the circumstances to go back on that decision.
“This is not a new phenomenon that has developed today,” said Justice Jain, with Justice Sathasivam telling state government counsel “we are conscious of the fact (of monitoring)”.
The Gujarat government in its submission objected to the monitoring of the trials in the riots cases by the SIT which submitted periodic reports to court.
Appearing for the Gujarat government, senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi told the court that “this monitoring must come to an end. Once the charge sheet has been filed, the trial has commenced, the monitoring must come to an end”.
Justice Jain said the rule calling for a halt to monitoring after the filing of the charge sheet was there when the apex court directed the SIT to monitor the trial in the riots cases.
“This rule was there when this order directing the SIT to monitor the trial was passed two years back. Let it go on for a few more months,” said Justice Jain.
Rohtagi said that “this is parallel situation”, and added that the trial court could direct the investigating agency to further probe the matter.
The court pulled up the SIT for its plea if it could issue clarification to media rebutting state Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s statement that investigations by the team were biased.
The SIT plea said that either it should be permitted to issue clarification or the apex court do so.
The court said “Do you expect that anything uttered anywhere would be dealt with by it.” “You must understand the scope of the large forum”.
On the resumption of trial in Gulberg Society case, the court said: “We are not going to say what the SIT has to do. They (SIT) have to read our order (of Sep 12) and move on.”
The court said that “we had stayed the trial. But the trial has to start”.
The court said this when senior counsel Ranjit Kumar told the court that by its Sep 12 order it had directed the further investigations by the SIT.