Sep
10
Gujarat Updates
September 10, 2004 | Leave a Comment
After the Supreme Court ordered the review of over 2000 cases closed after the Gujarat pogroms, a senior IPS officer reopened three cases relating to massacres in Kalol town. In the case relating to the massacre of 13 people in Ambica Society, senior Indian Police Service officer Neerja Gotru arrested sub-inspector R.J. Patil:
He had been reinstated and posted there after [Rajkot] having been suspended in December last year for his lax investigations in the case…
Patil allegedly did not file a proper first information report in the case, clubbed two other riot cases with the Ambica Society incident and tried to shield the accused. But the National Human Rights Commission, acting on complaints by witnesses, intervened in October 2003. It found the probe shoddy and tardy and ordered reinvestigation by an IPS officer…
After Gotru, then the Amreli district superintendent, took over as special investigating officer, five policemen and more than 20 others, most of them affiliated to various Sangh parivar outfits, were arrested. Among them is a personal assistant of a former Gujarat minister.
Two deputy superintendents of police have been arrested; two inspectors and a constable are also behind bars.
Ruksana Salimbhai Sheikh, a survivor of the massacre, described the murder of her husband and other relatives:
‘‘Late at night, I reached Kasba area on the outskirts of Kalol where a relief camp had been set up not knowing where the other members of my family were,’’ she says. ‘‘I had seen my husband being attacked by the mob with swords,’’ she recalls.
A few days later, says Ruksana, she and other family members approached the Kalol police to trace her husband. ‘‘Patil shooed us away. We were shattered. I was trying to find where my husband’s body had been kept, now I have got my answer,’’ she says.
In other Gujarat news, the new inquiry set up to investigate the Godhra carnage began last week—the report is due in three months. Last week, the POTA court rejected the bail applications of three of the accused.
A special court in Bombay began hearing the Bilkis Bano case, ordered for retrial outside of Gujarat. Additional Sessions Judge U D Salvi is conducting the trial. After the first day of hearing, the trial was deferred until September 15, because the accused were not produced in court.
On September 15, the court retrying the Best Bakery case will also frame fresh charges against the accused.
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