Court defers order on bail pleas of Teesta Setalvad, Sreekumar till Friday

A sessions court in Ahmedabad on Thursday deferred till Friday its order on the bail applications of activist Teesta Setalvad and former DGP R B Sreekumar in a case of allegedly fabricating evidence to frame innocent people in 2002 riots casesThe court of Additional Principal Judge D D Thakkar was scheduled to pronounce the order on Thursday but deferred it till FridayThe court was earlier scheduled to pronounce the order on their bail pleas on July 26 However it had said at that time that it would do so on Thursday as the order was not ready But the court on Thursday deferred the order for the second time this weekThe court had last week reserved its order after hearing arguments from the counsels appearing for Setalvad Sreekumar and the prosecutionAlso Read Gujarat riots SIT reveals Teesta Sreekumar Sanjeev Bhatt received money from Ahmed Patel to frame ModiThe duo are among three accused the third being former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in the case The three accused have been arrested by the city crime branch under Indian Penal Code IPC sections 468 forgery for purpose of cheating and 194 giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offenceThe Special Investigation Team SIT constituted to probe the case had told the court 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 ModiIt alleged that at Patels behest Setalvad received Rs 30 lakh after postGodhra riots in 2002 that was used for the purposeSreekumar 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 the SIT has alleged They also tutored witnesses it saidBoth Setalvad and Sreekumar have denied the allegations made against themA first information report FIR was registered against them after the Supreme Court last month dismissed the plea filed by Zakia Jafri whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed during the riotsThe plea alleged a larger conspiracy behind the 2002 postGodhra riots in Gujarat involving the then chief minister Narendra Modi The court upheld the SITs clean chit to Modi and 63 othersIn its judgment the Supreme Court observed that At the end of the day it appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create sensation by making revelations which were false to their own knowledgeThe falsity of their claims had been fully exposed by the SIT after a thorough investigation As a matter of fact all those involved in such abuse of process need to be in the dock and proceed in accordance with lawEhsan Jafri was among the 68 people killed at Ahmedabads Gulberg Society during violence on February 28 2002 a day after the Godhra train burning that claimed 59 livesThe riots that it triggered killed 1044 people mostly Muslims Giving details the central government had informed the Rajya Sabha in May 2005 that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed in the postGodhra riotsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever