{"id":367,"date":"2004-08-17T20:41:43","date_gmt":"2004-08-18T00:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2004\/08\/17\/gujarat-updates-supreme-court-orders"},"modified":"2004-08-17T20:41:43","modified_gmt":"2004-08-18T00:41:43","slug":"gujarat-updates-supreme-court-orders-review-of-2000-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2004\/08\/17\/gujarat-updates-supreme-court-orders-review-of-2000-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Gujarat Updates: Supreme Court Orders Review of 2000 Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a281'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">The Supreme Court has ordered senior police officers to <A href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/south_asia\/3572296.stm\">review<\/A><\/FONT><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"> around 2000 cases closed after the 2002 Gujarat pogroms:<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"><EM>The court wants the police to decide whether any of the cases should be reinvestigated&#x2026;<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"><EM>In its order, the Supreme Court called for the establishment of a cell headed by a senior police official to look into the circumstances in which the cases were closed.&nbsp; In many cases the investigating officers said they could not trace the culprits.&nbsp; There have been accusations that witnesses were threatened and forced to withdraw statements made to the police.<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">In the Best Bakery case, where 12 Muslims were burned alive, the Supreme Court named two new public <A href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/south_asia\/3569112.stm\">prosecutors<\/A><\/FONT><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">, trying to end a controversy that has prevented the trial from proceeding.<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">The Ex-Director General of Police of Gujarat <A href=\"http:\/\/cities.expressindia.com\/fullstory.php?newsid=95766\">testified<\/A><\/FONT><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"> today before the Nanavati and Shah Commission examining the 2002 Gujarat pogroms.&nbsp; He claimed that he wasn&#x2019;t consulted on the filing of POTA charges against the accused in the Godhra carnage case.&nbsp; He also tried to justify the failures of the Gujarat police:<\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"><EM>The former DGP during his cross-examination stated that on February 28, 2002, he had ordered his junior officers across the state to mobilise forces, monitor communally sensitive areas and even ensure that all minor cases are supervised as a backlash of the train carnage was expected. <\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"><EM>However, the officer failed to answer to queries as to why his orders were not taken seriously and why he was not kept updated about the situation&#x2026;.<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"><EM>Justifying the role of the Gujarat police during the carnage, Chakravarthy said the situation was chaotic and it was difficult to control the mob. He also blamed the electronic media and newspapers for inciting the masses.<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><br \/>\n<P><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\">In the Bilkis Bano case, also transferred outside of Gujarat by the Supreme Court, a special CBI court issued <A href=\"http:\/\/cities.expressindia.com\/fullstory.php?newsid=95394\">notices<\/A><\/FONT><FONT face=\"Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif\" size=\"2\"> to jail officials against whom some of the accused had leveled intimidation charges.<\/P><\/FONT><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court has ordered senior police officers to review around 2000 cases closed after the 2002 Gujarat pogroms: The court wants the police to decide whether any of the cases should be reinvestigated&#x2026; In its order, the Supreme Court called for the establishment of a cell headed by a senior police official to look [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}