Congress questions SC's Gujarat riots verdict, seeks 8 answers

The Congress party on Monday questioned the Supreme Court judgment in the Zakia Jafri case and termed it as deeply disappointing. 

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Jairam Ramesh, Congress Member of Parliament and General Secretary, said that the June 24 verdict upholding the SIT's clean chit to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and 63 others in the 2002 riots in the state, left a number of fundamental questions still unanswered.

The unanswered questions, according to the Congress, include:

* What is the chief minister and state government's constitutional and moral responsibility during large-scale communal riots?
 
* Is the responsibility in such cases, only ever that of the Collector & Deputy Commissioner of Police and not of the political executive?
 
* If a state is thrown into a circle of violence and riots, will the chief minister, cabinet and state government never be held accountable?

A day after the Godhra train burning that claimed 59 lives, Congress leader and former MP Ehsan Jafri was among the 68 people killed at Ahmedabad's Gulberg Society in violence a day later on February 28, 2002. The Supreme Court had on June 24 dismissed the plea of Jafri's wife Zakia, who had alleged a larger conspiracy, on the grounds that the material collected during the investigation does not create strong or grave suspicion regarding the hatching of a larger criminal conspiracy at the highest level for causing mass violence against Muslims.

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Countering the Supreme Court, the Congress party said that it stood by Jafri and his family and reiterated that what happened to the late MP was the result of a fundamental lapse on the part of the state government.

The Congress party further said there are five questions that would continue to haunt the Prime Minister:
 
* Was Narendra Modi not the Gujarat chief minister during the horrific riots of 2002?
 
* Why was then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee so affected by Modi's lack of action that he had to publicly remind the latter to follow his 'Rajdharma'?
 
* Did the Supreme Court not call the conduct of the then Modi government in Gujarat that of a 'Modern day Nero (who) was looking elsewhere when innocent children and helpless women were being burnt and were probably deliberating how the perpetrators of the crime can be saved or protected'?
 
* If he was not guilty of any wrongdoing, why did sections of the BJP, including now member of the Modi Cabinet, Smriti Irani protest and seek his dismissal?
 
* What about all the numerous convictions based of the evidence collected by the SIT relating to the Gujarat riots? Can the BJP claim that those also stand invalidated?

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• bjp
• congress
• ehsan jafri
• gujarat
• jairam ramesh
• modi
• narendra modi
• smriti irani
• supreme court
• zakia jafri
• Gujarat Riots 2002
• 2002 riots