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Friday, March 29, 2024

Modi Gets Clean Chit From SC

For Modi, Gujarat 2002 is best left to the past, forgotten! It made him a pariah in the eyes of billions, and the media wouldn’t leave him alone, dogging his steps like blood-sucking leeches. Internationally, country after the country refused him entry into their jurisdictions. Modi’s Islamophobia was highlighted throughout the globe

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Now, there is one more reason why the Muslim minority will not trust the Supreme Court of India. Earlier, there was Afzal Guru, as cited by Afreen Javed, Prayagraj riots kingpin Muhammad Javed’s daughter. On June 23, the apex court should have thought twice before it upheld the ‘clean chit’ given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the Gujarat High Court in the ‘larger conspiracy’ case slapped against him by Zakia Jafri whose husband Ehsan Jafri met a brutal end in the 2002 Gujarat riots. At the time, the refrain was that the Gujarat riots were an ‘action-reaction’ to Godhra. Ehsan Jafri, who was a Congress MP at the time, was dragged out of his home in Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002, and slaughtered by a rampaging mob. Ehsan’s wife Zakia Jafri is since then fighting alone, and now losing, the battle for justice for her husband and 68 others who were killed in Gulberg Society. Gujarat in 2002 left more than 2000 dead, the overwhelming number of them Muslims.

Modi survived to rewrite history, though he went through fire, hauled up before an SIT, and put through grilling questions lasting several hours, always escaping with a clean chit, as he did in the ‘larger conspiracy’ behind Ehsan Jafri killing case. The original ‘clean chit’ was given by the SIT probing the killings and upheld by the Gujarat High Court. Friday, June 23, the Supreme Court confirmed the clean chit. In language that was jarring to Zakia Jafri, the top court said, “We don’t countenance the submission of the appellant (Zakia Jafri) regarding infraction of rule of law regarding the investigation and the approach of the Magistrate and the High Court in dealing with the final report”. Zakia Jafri’s appeal was found ‘devoid of merits’, and deserving to be dismissed. The SIT had found no ‘prosecutable evidence’. Also, that petitioner No.2 Teesta Setalvad had ‘vested interests’ and wanted to “keep the (Gujarat riots) pot boiling.” For Modi, Gujarat 2002 is best left to the past, forgotten! It made him a pariah in the eyes of billions, and the media wouldn’t leave him alone, dogging his steps like blood-sucking leeches. Internationally, country after the country refused him entry into their jurisdictions. Modi’s Islamophobia was highlighted throughout the globe.

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The latest ‘clean chit’ to Modi comes on the eve of Modi heading for the G7 Summit in Germany, and thereafter to the UAE, one of several Muslim countries that had taken India to task for the alleged blasphemous remarks on Prophet Muhammad by BJP spokespersons. Imagine how the G7, and the UAE, would have reacted if the Supreme Court had ruled against Modi. Surely, sections of the national media would have roasted Modi and he would have flown to Germany with more questions following him, and waiting for him in Germany, and the UAE. Modi, ever since Gujarat 2002, and ever since he became Prime Minister in 2014, has been trying his best to refurbish and acquire for himself the image of a secular “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vishwas Vishwaguru” image. It got derailed when Nupur Sharma let loose with alleged blasphemy. Modi wants to forget 2002, and he recollects childhood ‘friend Abbas’, but Gujarat 2002 dogs him relentlessly, the latest clean-chit from the Supreme Court, regardless.

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The Hills Times
The Hills Timeshttps://www.thehillstimes.in/
The Hills Times, a largely circulated English daily published from Diphu and printed in Guwahati, having vast readership in hills districts of Assam, and neighbouring Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur.
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