Ahmedabad, March 22: Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has emphasised that he will respond to the Special Investigation Team probing the 2002 Gujarat riots, “fully respecting” the law, and strongly refuted reports that he was summoned by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT to appear
before it on March 21 to answer its queries on the Gulberg Society massacre. Mr Modi claimed there was an “organised conspiracy” to malign him, his government and the state of Gujarat with “fake” reports of his being summoned for interrogation.
In an emotional “open letter” addressed to “my beloved countrymen”, Mr Modi said: “The SIT had not fixed March 21, 2010 for my appearance... To say I was summoned on March 21 is completely false. I shall respond to the SIT, fully respecting the law and keeping in view the dignity of a body appointed by the Supreme Court.”
Mr Modi is believed to have written the letter on the advice of senior BJP leader and top lawyer Arun Jaitley, who rushed here from New Delhi on Monday. Mr Jaitley also said the March 21 SIT summons story was a “lie invented by vested interests”.
Earlier, SIT chief R.K. Raghavan had said Mr Modi was summoned on March 21, but all attempts to contact him on Monday failed. Mr Modi also said the March 21 summons was “ridiculous” as March 21 was a Sunday and SIT officers were not working on a public holiday.
He said in his open letter: “Truth cannot be suppressed. It is now my duty to place before you the facts... Recently, there has been a systematic campaign to defame Gujarat through propagation of false reports titled ‘Special Investigation Team summons Narendra Modi’; ‘Narendra Modi did not appear before SIT’ and ‘Modi has shown disrespect to Supreme Court and SIT’. Such baseless allegations are being levelled once again against me to defame Gujarat.”
This, he said, was a “matter of grave concern”, and an investigation was needed “as to why and who started spreading lies” that the SIT had summoned him on March 21. He urged the media not to become an instrument of “disinformers”.
The Opposition in the state lambasted Mr Modi’s letter, and said he was trying to instigate the country with a bunch of lies. Mr Modi had “a habit of seeing conspiracies in each and every thing”, said Leader of the Opposition Shaktisinh Gohil.
In a related development, the Gujarat high court on Monday asked the Nanavati Commission, probing the 2002 riot cases, to clarify by April 1 whether it will summon Mr Modi in the matter. A division bench of Chief Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya and Justice Akil Kureshi sought this information from the government pleader while hearing an appeal by the Jan Sangarsh Manch, an NGO representing the 2002 riot victims.
Deepal Trivedi