Image for Modi gets SIT summon

Ahmedabad, March 11: The ghosts of the 2002 riots has come to haunt Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi with the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team issuing a summons to him in connection with the Gulberg Society massacre, in which

former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was among the victims. This is the first time Mr Modi will be questioned in connection a riot case.
Mr Modi will have to appear before the SIT on March 21. State government spokesman Jainarayan Vyas, reacting to the summons, said: “The BJP government and the honourable chief minister ... will cooperate with the process of law.” Mr Modi attended office and the Assembly as usual on Thursday and his supporters claimed the SIT’s action would only further increase the chief minister’s popularity and image. “He is the tallest leader in the BJP and this will help us. This is only a formality,” said one of his supporters. BJP president Nitin Gadkari, meanwhile, was quoted as saying that Mr Modi would fully cooperate with the investigators.”
“We have today issued summons to the chief minister after examining witnesses in Gulberg Society case,” said SIT chief R.K. Raghavan, who confirmed that the SIT was nearing the end of its inquiry and was likely to submit its report by the end of next month.
Mr Raghavan refused to divulge further details, but said “a large number of witnesses have been examined, and now Mr Modi has to respond”. When pointedly asked if Mr Narendra Modi’s interrogation would end the inquiry, Mr Raghavan said: “Possibly yes, but not certainly.”
The chief minister’s office said it was yet to receive any formal summons, but sources claimed the government was seeking legal counsel in the matter. The summons to Mr Modi comes in the wake of the Jafri family’s long battle for justice. Deceased Congress MP Ehsan Jafri’s widow Zakia Jafri, who was present with her husband at Gulberg Society on that fateful day, has been relentlessly pursuing the case and had named the chief minister and other important leaders as accused in a “conspiracy” to kill the former MP and others. The summons follows her petition charging Mr Modi and the others.
Ms Zakia Jafri, saying she was “old and a tired woman”, said on Thursday she was “happy” that summons had been issued to Mr Modi, though “it should have happened much before... Still, better late than never...” Speaking to this newspaper, she said she hopes she is “called again (by the SIT)... He (Modi) is a very big man, and I am a small person, but if I have to face him (Modi), I am ready... I will tell him on his face about the role he has played.”
Mr Raghavan confirmed that the summons had been issued only in connection with the Jafri killing and had nothing to do with the nine other cases being investigated by the SIT in connection with the anti-Muslim violence that engulfed the state in early 2002.
The summons to the chief minister comes exactly four days before the Supreme Court is due to hear a petition questioning the credibility and constitution of the SIT. An NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace, has petitioned the court saying that two SIT members, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia, should be dropped as their credibility was questionable. Mr Jha is also one of the accused and hence should not be a part of the SIT, the NGO had contended.

Deepal Trivedi