According to the Gujarat Special Investigation Team (SIT), which is looking into allegations of evidence fabrication and conspiracy related to the 2002 Gujarat riots, activist Teesta Setalvad, retired DGP R B Sreekumar, and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt were all involved in a larger plot to overthrow or destabilize the state government led at the time by Narendra Modi by “hook or by crook.”
The SIT rejected the accused’s request for bail in a court document, contending that the scheme to damage Gujarat’s reputation was conceived by them at the direction of late Congressman Ahmed Patel, who was at the time a Rajya Sabha MP and a political advisor to party leader Sonia Gandhi.
The affidavit was presented to Additional Sessions Judge D. D. Thakkar, who recorded the SIT’s response and scheduled the hearing on the bail plea for Monday.
Setalvad allegedly received “illegal financing and other perks and rewards from the political party” for accusing and bringing charges against “different authorities and other innocent persons in Gujarat, including the then chief minister Narendra Modi,” according to the investigation team.
Along with former IPS officers R B Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt, Setalvad has been detained for allegedly manipulating evidence to frame innocent persons in instances involving the Gujarat riots.
The SIT’s affidavit stated that the applicant (Setalvad) obtained illegal financial and other benefits and rewards from a rival political party in exchange for her attempts to falsely accuse innocent people in Gujarat. “The political objective of the applicant (Setalvad) while enacting this larger conspiracy was dismissal or destabilisation of the elected government,” it added.
The SIT used a witness’s testimony to support its claim that Patel was behind the plot to topple the Gujarati government and frame Narendra Modi. Setalvad allegedly received Rs 30 lakh at Patel’s request following the post-Godhra riots in 2002.
The SIT also asserted that Setalvad regularly met with the leaders of a “prominent national party then in power in Delhi to implicate names of key leaders of the BJP administration in riot cases.”
It cited a different witness to assert that Setalvad had questioned a Congress official in 2006 about why the party was only giving “opportunity to Shabana and Javed” and not electing her to the Rajya Sabha.
State police detained Setalvad last month, a day after the Supreme Court confirmed the clear record granted to former chief minister Narendra Modi and others in the Gujarat riots case.
She was charged with forgery under IPC sections 468 and 194 (providing or inventing false evidence with the aim to get a conviction for a death offense), as well as other offenses, along with Sreekumar and Bhatt.
