Setalvad is charged with exhuming bodies of 2002 riots victims and “creating media sensation” by displaying the same through electronic media.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – The Gujarat High Court on Monday said it was “prima facie not inclined” to quash a First Information Report (FIR) against activist Teesta Setalvad in the Pandarwada mass grave digging case related to 2002 riots in the state.
The court orally remarked that after going through the records, it is “prima facie not inclined” to quash FIR filed at the Mahisagar district in 2006, reports reaching here said on Tuesday.
Justice Sandeep Bhatt orally remarked to Setalvad’s lawyer that “why are such dead horses required to be pulled?” and posted the matter next for hearing on January 9. Justice Bhatt said, “After going through the record, I’m not inclined, prima facie.”
Setalvad is charged with allegedly exhuming bodies of 2002 Gujarat riots victims and “creating media sensation” by displaying the same through electronic media. Notably, in an FIR filed by the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) in Ahmedabad in 2022, the prosecution and police relied on this case against Setalvad to cite her criminal antecedents of allegedly fabricating evidence in connection with the Gujarat riots.
Setalvad has moved the court seeking to quash the 2006 FIR and the chargesheet in the case.
The FIR was filed under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 192, 193 (fabricating false evidence), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), 297 (trespassing on burial grounds) and 114 (abetment).
The police have claimed that that Setalvad, along with two others — former IPS officers R.B. Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt — tried to implicate the then Gujarat chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi, higher officials of the state government, and top leaders of the BJP for the large-scale deaths in the 2002 communal riots by initiating a fake case.
More than 2,000 people, an overwhelming majority of them Muslims, were killed in the communal riots that rocked various part of the state about 22 years ago.
Setalvad was arrested in June 2022 by the Anti Terrorism Squad of Gujarat within 24 hours of the Supreme Court dismissing a plea preferred by Zakia Jafri, the widow of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, for a probe into the larger conspiracy case behind the riots.
She was granted bail by the apex court in July 2023.
In November 2023, the Supreme Court granted anticipatory bail to Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand in a case of alleged embezzlement of funds meant for victims of Gujarat riots.