The Hindu : National : Notice to Gujarat government on plea for CBI probe

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Notice to Gujarat government on plea for CBI probe

J. Venkatesan

Special leave petition seeks probe into killings during post-Godhra riots

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Gujarat government on a special leave petition seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the killings of 21 persons in post-Godhra riots whose bodies and skeletal remains were exhumed in 2005.

A Bench of Justice B. N. Aggarwal and Justice P.P. Naolekar, after hearing senior counsel Harish Salve, for the petitioners, also sought response from the CBI in four weeks on the SLP filed by Ameenabehn Habib Rassol and others against a Gujarat High Court order rejecting their plea for a CBI probe.

The petitioners said that the bodies of 21 victims killed in 2002 were exhumed from a place in Padarwara in Panchmahal district of Gujarat in 2005. Of the 21 bodies, DNA of eight had matched with their relatives.

They alleged that the bodies of the victims who died in the massacre were not returned to their families. Though the relatives had approached the authorities concerned they did not get any reply.

They said that in the investigation conducted by the State police there was no whisper of anything relating to the missing persons, whose bodies were recovered. The DNA report had confirmed the petitioners’ fear that the bodies were dumped deliberately.

Wrong appreciation

They said that the High Court had rejected the plea for a CBI probe on wrong appreciation of facts and law. The plea was dismissed on an erroneous ground that the petitioners had not adopted the procedure provided under the Criminal Procedure Code. Contending that the High Court did not appreciate the fact that the investigation by the State police did not pertain to missing persons, they sought quashing of the impugned judgment and a direction to order a CBI probe into the incidents.

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