Top cops as accused? Court likely to decide next week

Ahmedabad : The special trial court for the 2002 Gulberg Society massacre case is expected to take a decision on a petition that demands to arraign three senior IPS officers, who were posted in Ahmedabad city during the riots, as accused next week.

The officers have been identified as the then Police Commissioner P C Pande, the then Joint Commissioner of Police M K Tandon and the then Deputy Commissioner of Police P B Gondia. Pande and Tandon have retired while Gondia is in service.

They were among the 62 persons, including Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who were named in a complaint lodged by Zakia Jafri, the widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri. The Supreme Court-appointed SIT has recently filed a closure report on the complaint.

Some witnesses and victims in the case had moved an application to arraign these officers and S S Chudasama, who investigated the case initially, as accused for the alleged criminal negligence they showed during the riots by not being able to check the rioters that attacked Gulberg Society despite innumerable distress calls.

The trial court did not entertain the application saying it was not proper time to deal with it since the Supreme Court was seized with the matter on Zakia's complaint.

Subsequently, the SIT submitted its final report on Zakia's complaint before the concerned magisterial court last month and also provided a copy of the same to her.

Following this, advocate of some of the victims and witnesses approached the trial court with an oral appeal that their application to arraign Pande, Tandon, Gondia and Chudasama was pending and the court was required to decide the same since the SIT had filed its final report, part of which was directly connected with the case.

Defence lawyer Robin Mogera said that following the request, the court has decided to fix the date for final hearing of the application on May 23.

The SIT is also expected to submit the relevant papers before the trial court.

Source: The Indian Express