No conspiracy in sending kar sevaks' bodies to Ahmedabad: SIT

Supreme Court-appointed SIT today claimed that there was "no conspiracy" behind the decision to hand over to the VHP the bodies of those kar sevaks, who died in Godhra train burning incident on February 27, 2002, for being taken to Ahmedabad.
"There is no truth behind complainant's claims that a conspiracy was hatched in a closed-door meeting between the Chief Minister (Narendra Modi) and other political leaders, held at Godhra circuit house on February 27, 2002 to hand over bodies to the VHP and send them to Ahmedabad," SIT lawyer R S Jamuar said today.
"We find no evidence of such a meeting ever held and the then Godhra Collector Jayanti Ravi, during her examination by the SIT, had clearly denied that the decision of sending bodies to Ahmedabad was taken against her wishes," he said.

Jamuar was defending the closure report of the SIT before Metropolitan Magistrate B J Ganatra during the hearing of the protest petition of Zakia Jafri seeking filing of charge sheet against Modi and 58 others, who she had named in her complaint filed before the Supreme Court. She had also sought further investigations by an independent agency other than the SIT.
The SIT has given clean chit to Modi and others in its closure report filed before this court on February 8, 2012. In the 2002 riots, around 1,000 people were killed.
Jamuar was referring to the claims made by one retired IAS officer Shankar Menon, who, in his statement before the SIT on May 11, 2010 had said that Ravi had told him that the decision to take the bodies was taken against her wishes. Jafri has cited Menon's statement in her protest petition.

"Petitioner is alleging, citing Jayanti Ravi, that after the incident CM visited Godhra and the site of incident and he had closeted himself in the circuit house with his close political workers and colleagues," he said.
Terming these allegations as "baseless", Jamuar had argued that the SIT had collected every possible evidence and none of it suggest that such a meeting was held at all. "We had examined Ravi more than once and every time she had denied that such a meeting had ever taken place," he said.