State government destroyed “potentially incriminating documents with tacit blessings of SIT”
The suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt says the closure report submitted
by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) only
confirmed his long-standing apprehension that it was only working to
“shield” Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other “powerful persons” from
legal punishment for their involvement in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom.
In a letter to SIT Chairman R. K. Raghavan on Wednesday, Mr. Bhatt said
it was “outrageously shocking” that even after his repeated requests the
SIT did not issue any timely direction to the State government for
preservation and production of vital contemporaneous documents, and
allowed it to selectively destroy the potentially incriminating
documents “with the tacit blessings of the SIT.”
Claiming that the closure report made it apparently clear that the SIT
was carrying out “further investigation” even after the September 12,
2011 Supreme Court order to submit its final report to a competent
metropolitan magistrate's court in Ahmedabad, Mr. Bhatt said it was done
“with the sole purpose and motive of shielding Mr. Modi and other
powerful accused persons from legal punishment.”
Mr. Bhatt said the SIT was not required to investigate the observations made by amicus curiae
Raju Ramachandran but it deliberately did so to find loopholes in his
report and demolish his remark that criminal cases could be framed
against Mr. Modi for allegedly creating communal disharmony under
Sections of the Indian Penal Code.
Referring to a confidential letter — quoted by Mr. Ramachandran in his
report — allegedly sent by the Under Secretary of the State Home
Department to the SIT Chairman four days after Mr. Bhatt had met the amicus curiae
in Gandhinagar, the suspended IPS officer said the “Janus-faced
policies, as well as the collaborative machinations of the state of
Gujarat and the SIT under your stewardship, once again stand exposed in
this overt attempt at influencing the ongoing investigation against the
Chief Minister and other powerful persons.”
The June 26, 2011 letter, in which the State government claimed to have
“retrieved” several e-mails of Mr. Bhatt, said: “It leaves no room for
doubt that it is a systematic and larger conspiracy, through Mr. Sanjiv
Bhatt, involving top leaders of the Congress party in Gujarat, vested
interests groups surviving on [an] anti-Gujarat campaign and electronic
and print media reporters all of whom have started final efforts to keep
the Godhra riot issue [a]live based on concocted facts and Mr. Bhatt,
through all of them, is trying to build up a story at a stage when after
almost 10 long years the honourable Supreme Court has virtually
concluded the judicial proceedings after undertaking tremendous judicial
exercise and [as] elaborately pointed out in the affidavit of the State
government.”
The letter, Mr. Bhatt claimed, was clear proof of the State government,
which should be the prosecutor, trying to influence the ongoing
investigation and shielding Mr. Modi and the other accused.
Mr. Bhatt took strong exception to the SIT demolishing his two fax
messages dated February 27 and 28, 2002, as “concocted and unreliable.”
He gave long explanations to justify his claim that the messages he sent
as Deputy Commissioner of the intelligence branch then were real and
established that Mr. Modi was continuously informed of the developing
serious situation outside Gulberg Society but the Chief Minister refused
to take any action to pre-empt the strike, and that the then Ahmedabad
Police Commissioner P. C. Pande was guilty of dereliction despite being
cautioned about the possible repercussions of the “Chief Minister's
decision” to bring the bodies of the train carnage victims to Ahmedabad
on the Gujarat Bandh day.
Mr. Bhatt said Mr. Raghavan, as a retired senior IPS officer, should
have realised that the grounds the SIT had shown for calling copies of
his fax messages concocted were not justified. He said the reasons that
the messages did not bear any security classification, that they carried
serial numbers different from the number allocated to the intelligence
agency on these days or that the serial numbers were typed, instead of
being handwritten as was the usual practice, were inadequate to declare
his claims unreliable.
‘Nothing secret'
Attaching copies of some other fax messages, Mr. Bhatt claimed that all
fax messages need not carry security classification by default as it was
decided on the contents. The messages he sent did not contain any
information of a confidential or secret nature warranting their bearing
the security classification. It was a common practice in the Gujarat
police to assign serial number 100 for urgently numbering
out-of-sequence communications in emergency situations whenever it was
inexpedient to obtain the specific number of the dispatch sequencing.
His messages shown as carrying the serial number 100 and other weak
grounds adduced did not mean these were created later. But the SIT was
making “overzealous efforts to undermine the credibility of the
messages.”
‘Outrageously shocking'
Mr. Bhatt said the fact that the originals of the fax messages could not
be traced in the official records only strengthened his long-standing
apprehension that the State government had been selectively destroying
the potentially incriminating documents, and despite his repeatedly
cautioning the SIT about such possibilities, it allowed the government
to carry on with its destructive action. It was “outrageously shocking”
that the SIT in its final report dispensed with the issue of
“non-preservation or destruction of material documents and records” in
just one insignificant sentence that the “efforts were made to locate
the dispatch register and [the] fax register of state IB control room,
but the same had been reportedly destroyed.”
‘Bid to destroy evidence'
Mr. Bhatt said: “It is now become increasingly clear that agencies and
offices working under the control of the State government of Gujarat
have conspired to selectively destroy potentially incriminating
documents and records pertaining to the Gujarat carnage 2002. It is also
apparent that despite repeated requests, the SIT did not make any
fruitful efforts for the production and/or preservation of crucial and
relevant records and thereby indirectly facilitated the process of
destruction of very vital evidence. The SIT under your stewardship has
conveniently chosen to ignore the fact that such acts on the part of the
State government or its agents would amount to offences under Sections
120-B (conspiracy), 201 and 204 of the Indian Penal Code.”
The Hindu
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