2002 Gujarat riots: SC adjourns Zakia Jafri's plea till Jan third week

New Delhi, Dec 3: Supreme Court adjourned till January third week the plea filed by Zakia Jafri challenging clean chit given by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to PM Narendra Modi, other top politicians and bureaucrats in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Zakia Jafri is the widow of slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri who was killed by a mob which attacked the Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002.

On November 26, the plea came up before Justices A M Khanwilkar and Deepak Gupta and the bench had deferred the hearing in the case by a week. Earlier, the hearing was deferred by a week on November 19.

Zakia Jafri has challenged an October 5, 2017 judgment of the Gujarat High Court which upheld the clean chit given to several politicians and senior bureaucrats by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in its closure report, citing lack of "prosecutable evidence" against them.

The petition further says the High Court refused to interfere with the Magistrate's order "despite large amount of documentation and contemporaneous evidence that existed which made out a triable case against all the accused".