The Supreme Court on Thursday set a three-month deadline for the trial court in Gujarat to complete the trial in the Gulbarg Society massacre case.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had praised the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by it to probe the Gujarat riot cases, for progress in the investigations.
The court had in April noted that “out of nine cases monitored by the court, investigation in six cases is over, resulting in conviction. And the rest of the three cases are in the final stages.”
The court had appointed the SIT in 2008.
Out of the three cases in which verdict is still awaited, one is the Gulbarg Society massacre case.
68 people, including former Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri, were killed in the attack on Gulbarg Society in Ahmedadad by a mob on February 28, 2002.
Jafri’s wife Zakiya had accused then Chief Minister Narendra Modi of complicity in the riots.
The SIT, however, had given Modi clean chit in its February 2012 closure report saying there was no prosecutable evidence against the then CM.
A metropolitan court in Ahmedabad had later accepted the clean chit given to Modi and rejected Zakia Jafri’s petition challenging the SIT’s closure report.
Jafri had then challenged the clean chit to Modi in the Gujarat High Court, where the case is still pending.
