SIT too a 'caged parrot' in case againt Guajrat CM

  The Supreme Court has dubbed the CBI as "caged parrot" for showing its report to a minister and compromising on its independence. But the SC-appointed special investigation team (SIT) to probe the 2002 riots had acted in a similar fashion and this was brought to the apex court's notice in 2011. In one of his earlier affidavits filed before the SC, suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt had furnished documents to prove how the SIT selectively supplied reports to those who have actually been named as accused in complaints. Bhatt has termed it "unholy nexus and illegal complicity" between high functionaries of the Gujarat state and other extraneous political entities. He claimed that the entire exercise to leak information and accommodate opinions of the accused by the SIT in its reports and submissions before the courts during criminal proceedings was part of "the on-going cover-up operations and machinations aimed at shielding the powerful". By citing e-mails sent and received in early 2010 by Gujarat government's additional advocate general Tushar Mehta, Bhatt claimed that the reports submitted by the SIT to the apex court in nine major riots cases were sent from Gujarat government's e-mail ID to Mehta and then to secretary to CM G C Murmu and under secretary of state home department Vijay Badheka. Bhatt supplied mails circulated among Mehta, state officials and lawyer-politician Gurumurthy Swaminathan between February 6 and March 15, 2010, in which it is clearly established that the reports were diluted by "outsiders" who were also helping the accused to prepare their defence. Bhatt also cited an example of Bipin Patel, an accused in the Gulbarg Society massacre case, whose affidavit was prepared by Mehta, while the prosecution's affidavit was also prepared by him.   Source: TOI