Gujarat riots: Teesta Setalvad and others plotted to frame Narendra Modi at behest of Ahmed Patel, SIT tells court
The Gujarat Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing charges of fabrication of evidence and conspiracy linked to the 2002 Gujarat riots told a city sessions court on Friday that activist Teesta Setalvad, retired DGP R B Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt were part of a larger conspiracy for dismissal or destabilisation of the then Narendra Modi-led state government by “hook or by crook”.
In an affidavit filed before the court, the SIT opposed the bail plea of the accused, claiming that the conspiracy to malign Gujarat’s image was hatched by them at the behest of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel, who was then a Rajya Sabha MP and political advisor to party chief Sonia Gandhi.
The affidavit was filed before Additional sessions judge D D Thakkar who took the SIT’s reply on record and posted the hearing on the bail application on Monday.
The probe team has claimed that Setalvad obtained “illegal finances and other benefits and rewards from the political party” for implicating and prosecuting “various authorities and other innocent persons in Gujarat, including the then chief minister Narendra Modi”.
Setalvad has been arrested, along with former IPS officers R B Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt, for allegedly fabricating evidence to frame innocent people in Gujarat riots cases.
“The political objective of the applicant (Setalvad) while enacting this larger conspiracy was dismissal or destabilisation of the elected government….She obtained illegal financial and other benefits and rewards from rival political party in lieu of her attempts to wrongly implicate innocent persons in Gujarat,” said the SIT’s affidavit.
The SIT cited statements of a witness to back its charge that the conspiracy to destabilise the Gujarat government and frame Narendra Modi was hatched at the behest of Patel. At Patel’s behest, Setalvad received Rs 30 lakh after post-Godhra riots in 2002, it alleged.
Setalvad used to meet the leaders of a “prominent national party in power at that time in Delhi to implicate names of senior leaders of the BJP government in riot cases,” the SIT further claimed.
It cited another witness to claim that Setalvad in 2006 had asked a Congress leader why the party was giving “chance to only Shabana and Javed” and not making her a member of the Rajya Sabha.
Last month, a day after the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given to then chief minister Narendra Modi and others in Gujarat riots case, state police arrested Setalvad.
She, along with Sreekumar and Bhatt, was booked under IPC sections 468 (forgery) and 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence) among other offences.