A sessions court in Ahmedabad on Saturday denied bail to activist Teesta Setalvad and former Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP) RB Sreekumar in a case related to their alleged fabrication of documents to frame innocent people in 2002 Gujarat Riots cases.
Additional principal judge DD Thakkar said that both the orders are rejected.
Setalvad and Sreekumar were arrested by the Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch last month on the basis of a First Information Report (FIR) against them under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 468 and 194. IPC section 468 deals with forgery for purpose of cheating and 194 deals with giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence.
In its affidavit, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to probe the case has alleged that Setalvad and Sreekumar were part of a larger conspiracy carried out at the behest of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel to destabilise the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Narendra Modi, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time.
The SIT has alleged that Setalvad was paid Rs 30 lakh at Patel's behest soon after the Godhra train burning incident of 2002. Fifty-nine karsevaks were killed in the Godhra train burning.
The SIT claimed that Sreekumar was a "disgruntled government officer" who "abused the process for damning the elected representatives, bureaucracy and police administration of the whole state of Gujarat for ulterior purposes".
Apart from Setalvad and Sreekumar, former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt is also an accused in the case and has been arrested.
The FIR against Setalvad, Sreekumar, and Bhatt was registered after the Supreme Court last month dismissed the plea filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Her plea had alleged a "larger conspiracy" behind the post-Godhra incident riots.
On February 8, 2012, the SIT filed a closure report giving a clean chit to Modi and 63 others, including senior government officials, saying there was "no prosecutable evidence" against them. The apex court on June 24 this year upheld the SIT's clean chit to Modi and 63 others.
(With PTI inputs)
