The Supreme Court of India will hear a petition on Monday filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri, challenging the acquittal of Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in the 2002 Godhra massacre case.
Ehsan Jafri, a former Congress MP, was killed by a mob which attacked the Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on the afternoon of February 28, 2002.
On October 5, 2017, the Gujarat High Court acquitted then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and other politicians and senior bureaucrats by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in its closure report, statingg lack of “prosecutable evidence” against them as a reason.
Zakia Jafri had challenged the 2017 order.
The Gujarat High Court, last year, upheld the judgment of the metropolitan court and rejected Zakia’s allegations that cases such as Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gam and Gulberg were part of a “larger conspiracy”. Five years after the Gujarat riots, Zakia had made allegations against Modi and the officers from the state machinery.
In 2012, a metropolitan court acquitted all 58 accused in the post-Godhra massacre in which 69 people were killed. “According to the SIT, no offence has been established against any of the 58 persons listed in Zakia’s complaint,” metropolitan magistrate MS Bhatt had then said. The petitioners had then moved the High Court against the acquittal in 2013.
