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Political Notes |
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Gujarat riots : Court pulls up Modi govt
The Supreme Court has rapped the “modern day Neros” of the Gujarat Government all over again for trying to stall the retrial of the Best Bakery case in Maharashtra and having “sympathies more for the accused than the victims.”
Dismissing an application seeking modification of the judgment delivered on April 12, a bench comprising Justice Doraiswamy Raju and Justice Arijit Pasayat said the Narendra Modi Government had made “false and misleading claims” in its plea and betrayed “its true colours.” The apex court took strong view of the state’s “veiled threat of legal action for changed statements” against Zahira Sheikh and its attack on her “credibility as a witness.” In its order written by Justice Pasayat, the bench said this casts doubts on the “bona fides” of the state Government as “it sounds more like a stand of the defence and not that of the prosecutor.”
The latest order laid bare an inherent contradiction in the application for modification of the judgment directing transfer and retrial of the Best Bakery case. While it claims to have no objection to the case being retried in Gujarat to reconsider Zahira’s evidence, the Modi Government said that she was “habitual in making different statements at different times” and the court should, therefore, not have transferred the case out of Gujarat “based upon the testimony of such a witness.”
Justice Pasayat said this gives the impression that “in the eyes of the state, Zahira is the accused who should be in the dock and not the persons who are made accused in the case.” In a scathing observation, the Supreme Court said the fact that the state Government had “sympathies more for the accused than the victims becomes crystal clear when one looks at the state’s stand that the ramifications of the transfer are serious insofar as the accused are concerned.”
The apex court rejected the state’s plea to expunge the observation made in the April 12 verdict that “the modern day Neros were looking elsewhere when Best Bakery and innocent children and helpless women were burning.” Significantly, the Supreme Court declined to expunge its criticism of the Gujarat High Court for upholding the acquittal of the accused in the Best Bakery case. The April 12 judgment said: “The High Court appears to have miserably failed to maintain the required judicial balance and sobriety..”
Following the Supreme Court’s latest order in the Gujarat Government’s application for modification of the April 12 judgment in the Best Bakery case, the Congress has said the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, had lost the moral and political right to rule. However, Congress spokesman, Abhishek Singhvi, was quick to add that while making such a statement, the party was well aware that it was futile to expect. Modi to step down as he had never shown any “respect for constitutional institutions or political propriety.”
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