A court in Ahmedabad on Tuesday, directed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to give a copy of its final report on the 2002 Gulbarg society massacre to Zakia Jafri.
The court order said Jafri should be provided with a copy of the report within 30 days.
Jafri is the wife of former Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri, who was among 69 people burnt alive by a rioting mob on 28 February, 2002 at the Gulbarg Housing Society in Ahmedabad.
In her petition, Zakia has accused over 50 people including Chief Minister Narendra Modi of being involved in the post-Godhra riots.
She alleges her husband Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri was brutally burnt alive outside his house in the Gulbarg Housing Society when he tried to plead for the lives of women and children being killed in the society complex in February 2002.
Media reports say that the agency had found no prosecutable evidence against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the Gulbarg Society massacre.
The SIT submitted its final findings on Jafri’s plea to the court of Metropolitan Magistrate M S Bhatt in February, in a sealed cover, and said it was up to the court to decide whether the main petitioner should get a copy. But it said it had reservations on sharing the report with a co-petitioner Teesta Setalvad.
The court had then refused to share a copy of the report saying the SIT had not submitted additional documents pertaining to the investigation and that without those available it would be premature to issue the report. It gave the SIT time till 15 March to furnish all documents. After the submission of the documents by the SIT team, Jafri approached the court for a copy again.
The investigators then argued that a copy should be given only after the magistrate studied the whole report and arrived at his own conclusion on whether he accepted or rejected the SIT’s findings. The magistrate subsequently ruled that Jafri should be given a copy of the report.
In two more post Godhra riot cases tried in Gujarat, 33 rioters were given life imprisonment in the Sardarpura case and 23 people convicted in the Ode massacre case.
— PTI