New Delhi, March 5: While urging the Supreme Court to remove all the three Gujarat police officials from the special investigating team probing the major post-Godhra riot cases, the NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), fighting for justice for the riot victims, has submitted detailed phone records of the top police establishment in the state in a bid to make a case for their removal.
The CJP had sought the removal of Gujarat police officers Geeta Johri, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia from the Supreme Court-appointed SIT under former CBI director R.K. Raghvan after the phone records of the top officers of the state police had come to light. CJP activist Teesta Setalvad in her application to the top court had termed it very disturbing.
The CJP stated that though the SIT had "arraigned" ACP K.G. Erda, who during the riots was police inspector in charge of Ahmedabad main city, he had made several calls to all the top officers, including the then police commissioner, P.C. Pandey, and joint commissioner M.K. Tandon, apprising them of the gravity of the situation.
His repeated calls for police assistance went unheeded even in the very heart of the city for hours, and whether it was merely "criminal neglect" or a matter of design on the part of the police establishment was a major question which the SIT "failed" to probe, the CJP claimed.
In a bid to make a case for the replacement of the three cops from the SIT, the CJP stated that Jha was then assistant commissioner and in charge of police control rooms in the city while Bhatia was in charge of the crime branch, which was responsible for investigating the riot cases, including the carnage at Gulbarga and Naroda Patiya.
"Erad’s phone records show that during the carnage on February 27 and 28, 2002, he had made regular calls (total 23) to the police control room, commissioner P.C. Pandey, joint commissioner M.K. Tandon and DCP P.B. Gondia, but the SIT apparently has not questioned any of them," the CJP alleged.
Pandey later had become Gujarat DGP and held the post till February 2009. The CJP has also referred to the records of the personal mobile numbers of these officers.
The CJP said the interrogation of all these top officers had become necessary in the wake of the "undisputed fact coming to light that two Cabinet ministers — Ashok Bhat and I.K. Jadeja — were sitting in police control rooms in Ahmedabad city and Gandhinagar during the long hours of the carnage even as Erda was regularly speaking to the control rooms."
The CJP has also referred to the statement of former top police officer R.B. Sreekumar in an affidavit before the Nanavati Commission that he "met the then DGP, K. Chakravarty, in CM Narendra Modi’s antechamber along with the then chief secretary, Subba Rao, and was informed by him (Chakaravarty) that the police had been instructed not to act."
"Despite all the material, the SIT does not appear to have questioned either Subba Rao, or Chakaravarty," the CJP said, adding that the phone records showed that the entire top police machinery was made deliberately defunct.
Since Johri, Jha and Bhatia were subordinate to Pandey, Tondon and Gondia, they were not expected to be fair when the role of the top officers is to be investigated, the CJP said.