Ahmedabad Court reserves order on Zakia Jafri’s SIT report plea

A metropolitan magistrate's court in Ahmedabad yesterday reserved order on Zakia Jafri's plea that the Special Investigation Team's report on her complaint regarding the 2002 Gujarat riots be opened and read out.

After hearing the arguments from both sides, the widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri and the SIT, magistrate M S Bhatt reserved the order for 3 March.

The SIT has submitted to the court the final report on Jafri's complaint of alleged complicity of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and others including top politicians, police personnel and bureaurats.

According to the submissions of Jafri's lawyers the SIT had no right to oppose the request to open the report, as it had become ''a public document'' after its submission to the court. It was open for access by anyone, and more so by the complainant and the SIT therefore had no say in this.

The lawyers further wanted to know why the prosecution (SIT) was opposing their application as it was the SIT that was tasked with the identification of the real culprits to book.

SIT lawyer RS Jamaur opposing the plea, said it had not submitted a complete report. It was for the court to read the report first, and only when it decided to close the complaint it could hand over a copy to the original complainant as per the Supreme Court's 12 September 2011 order.