AHMEDABAD: Social activist Teesta Setalvad on Monday denied all charges levelled against her in an affidavit by the special investigation team (SIT) investigating the case of fabrication of evidence behind the purported 2002 riots conspiracy and her lawyer asserted before a city sessions court that she had not accepted any money from Congress leader Ahmed Patel.
Opposing Setalvad’s bail plea, the SIT cited a witness and said that she had accepted Rs 30 lakh from Patel immediately after the Godhra train burning incident with the intention of maligning the image of the then chief minister Narendra Modi and others and to falsely implicate them on charges of a larger conspiracy to carry out the riots.
With Setalvad, the SIT has also accused former DGP R B Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt of conspiracy.
Besides the denial of all charges, of accepting money from the Congress leader and plotting against Modi and others, it was submitted for Setalvad that she should be released on bail because the city crime branch has filed an FIR for a non-cognizable offence despite a legal bar.
The complaint should ideally have filed in a court. Filing of an FIR is legally not permissible, sources said.
Setalvad’s advocate also denied the charge of making false affidavits for riots survivors.
It was argued that this issue was scrutinized by different trial courts and all the courts accepted the alleged false affidavits as evidence and punished the perpetrators of the riots.
For Sreekumar, it was argued that he was wrongly booked for his affidavits made before the Nanavati commission of inquiry, which was probing the 2002 riots.
The law gives immunity to a witness deposing before a commission of inquiry and he cannot be criminally prosecuted for his deposition.
It was questioned how affidavits filed before an inquiry commission could lead to the death sentence for people as alleged by the city crime branch in its FIR, which was filed on June 25, a day after the Supreme Court dismissed Zakia Jafri’s appeal against a clean chit to Modi and others on accusations of hatching a larger conspiracy behind the post-Godhra riots.
The state government is supposed to argue on the bail pleas by Setalvad and Sreekumar on Wednesday.
