Solicitor General Tushar Mehta who is appearing for Gujarat in the case, on Thursday told a bench of Justice UU Lalit that a response to Setalvad’s petition is ready but it requires some corrections.
The bench, comprising Justices S R Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia, said that the response to the petition is filed by August 27. The bench observed that the point is that she is behind the bars, as per PTI reports.
On August 22, the apex court sought a response from the Gujarat government on Setalvad's bail plea, who was arrested in June this year in the case.
Both the accused -- Teesta Setalvad and R B Sreekumar -- have denied the charges. Apart from Setalvad and Sreekumar, former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt is also an accused in the case and has been arrested.
The crime branch has arrested the trio and filed an first information report (FIR) against them under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence).
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case in its affidavit alleged that the accused were part of a larger conspiracy carried out at the behest of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel to destabilize the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Narendra Modi.
Also the SIT had alleged that Setalvad was paid ₹30 lakh at Patel's behest soon after the Godhra train burning incident of 2002. While, Sreekumar abused the process for damning the elected representatives, bureaucracy and police administration of the whole state of Gujarat for ulterior purposes.
The FIR against Setalvad, Sreekumar and Bhatt was registered after the Supreme Court last month dismissed the plea filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Her plea had alleged a "larger conspiracy" behind the post-Godhra riots.
The SIT filed a closure report on 8 February, 2012, giving a clean chit to Prime Minister Modi and 63 others, including senior government officials, saying there was "no prosecutable evidence" against them. The top court on June 24 this year upheld the SIT's clean chit to Modi and 63 others.
(With PTI inputs)
