Setalvad, Sreekumar held a day after SC’s clean chit to Modi

New Delhi: A day after the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in 2002 riots case, the Gujarat Police detained activist Teesta Setalvad and retired DGP RB Sreekumar on Saturday.

Setalvad was picked by the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of the Gujarat Police from her house in Mumbai. She was then taken to a local police station before driving her to Ahmedabad, according to reports. Sreekumar was picked up from his residence in Gandhinagar Saturday afternoon by a team of Ahmedabad crime branch.

He was then taken to crime branch headquarters Gaekwad Haveli in Jamalpur, Ahmedabad. Setalvad was a co-petitioner in the case that was dismissed by the Supreme Court on Friday that challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s exoneration. Zakia Jafri, wife of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed in the riots, was the main petitioner.

The action against Setalvad came hours after Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in an interview with ANI, accused Setalvad of giving baseless information to the police about the 2002 Gujarat riots. Shah said Setalvad had an NGO which had submitted applications to police stations against BJP workers and they were sought as truth. “Teesta Setalvad’s NGO was doing this,” he said.

An FIR was registered on Saturday accusing Sreekumar, dismissed IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt who is in prison in another case, and Setalvad on charges of forgery, conspiracy and other sections of the IPC, based on a complaint by police inspector DB Barad.

Sreekumar, Bhatt and Setalvad have been booked under sections 468, 471, 194, 211, 218, and 120B of the IPC. The FIR cites observations from the SC verdict to state: “At the end of the day, it appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create sensation by making revelations which were false to their own knowledge.

The falsity of their claims had been fully exposed by the SIT after a thorough investigation. Intriguingly, the present proceedings have been pursued for last 16 years (from submission of complaint dated 8.6.2006 running into 67 pages and then by filing protest petition dated 15.4.2013 running into 514 pages) including with the audacity to question the integrity of every functionary involved in the process of exposing the devious stratagem adopted to keep the pot boiling, obviously, for ulterior design. As a matter of fact, all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law.”