[1]The Supreme Court on Thursday warned against “interfering” in the trial proceedings in the sensitive Gujarat riot cases in any manner by any one even if the person was actively involved in pursuing the inquiry and passed a restraint order to prevent this happening in future.
A bench, monitoring the investigation in nine major cases, passed the restraint order after a report was submitted before it stating that social activists Teesta Setalwad, had tried to “interact” with a public prosecutor and allegedly asked him certain questions about court proceedings.
Ms Setalwad, who was present in the court in her personal explanation, told the bench of Justices D.K. Jain, P. Sathasivam and Aftab Alam that her query to the prosecutor was relating only to a witness.
Ms Setalwad is associated with the NGO, Citizen for Justice and Peace and had been taking up the issue of Gujarat riot victims since the very begnning at different forum.
Though the bench was not impressed with her submission, yet it refrained from probing it further but told her that there was entire “transcript” of her telephonic conversation along with her telphone number before the court, sent in a report by the “supervising officer” of the case. The case related to an application by one Saleem Sheik submitted before the trial court in Meghani Nagar in Ahmedabad, in which he had pleaded staying the trial proceedings. “Teesta Telphoned to the prosecutor asking him why he had objected to the application. He (prosecutor) too was biased like the trial judge,” the bench quoted from the transcript attributed to her in the open court.
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