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“The report has not looked at any of this. There is not a sentence in the report on any of this. If there was, I would tell you. I am an officer of the court. All this material was with the SIT and it was not looked at,” Sibal said.”The material is to be looked at based on the allegations,” remarked the judge.”These are part of the protest petition allegations. In the closure report, none of this has been looked at. Now, look at the protest petition. We will go allegation-wise,” responded Sibal.Sibal said the report expressly omitted the allegations with regards to a meeting convened by the then-CM of Gujarat Narendra Modi on February 27 where allegedly certain instructions were given in connection with the subsequent three-day mayhem.”I don’t want to enter into any political arena. I only want the rule of law to be upheld,” Sibal reiterated.Parading of bodies by VHP leader“It may be noted that the protest petition urged that the handing over of the bodies to a private person was part of the larger conspiracy and that it was the alleged “parading” of the bodies in Ahmedabad which was said to have been one of the reasons behind the state-wide reprisal killings,” he said.”Why the dead bodies were handed over to Jaideep Patel is a serious issue. Jaideep Patel was no official. He was a VHP functionary. Dead bodies were handed over on an official document. A private person has handed over dead bodies in respect of offences of murder, burning, which caused a national outburst, and rightly so. And this is all which is said by the SIT?… What it is said is ‘alright, we will have an enquiry’. What happened to that enquiry? Nothing. The fact of the matter is that Jaideep Patel made the statement that it was unanimously agreed that he should be handed over the bodies. This asks for serious investigation! Someone has to be prosecuted for it! Because what happened in the process was that by the time the bodies reached at 3:30 or 4 in the morning by truck, 3000 people had already gathered there!” Sibal said.When Justice Khanwilkar noted from the records that the bodies were handed over to the kith and kin, Sibal clarified that they were initially given to Jaideep Patel on February 27, 2002, and handed to the kith and kin only a day later.Ministers in the control roomSibal said, “An allegation is made that IK Jadeja, Minister for Urban Development, and Ashok Bhat, Law Minister, and formerly Health Minister, were there in the control room. The SIT asked the accused whether they were there or not. One said I was not there, the other said I was there for 2-3 hours in the control room but I did not give any instructions. And the SIT accepts this and that is the end of the matter! Even the local police would not do this! In which SIT is the accused asked for an explanation and that is accepted? What business does an urban development minister have to be in the police control room? Somebody has to investigate this!”At this, Justice Khanwilkar observed, “Both aspects have been noted in this report. The conclusion has been given on the basis of that”.”But what is the investigation on that? Which accused will say I am guilty? Will you just accept what you are being told and close the investigation? In normal cases, such a contradiction would lead to custodial interrogation. So what was the SIT doing? Nobody was arrested? Nobody was interrogated?” Sibal responded.
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Will SC decision to review SIT clean chit to 64, including Modi, finally unravel ‘conspiracy’?
