In a setback to social activist Teesta Setalvad, the Gujarat High Court on Saturday rejected the regular bail plea and directed her to surrender immediately in a case of alleged fabrication of evidence and forgery linked to the post-Godhra riots.
The court of Justice Nirzar Desai directed her to surrender immediately as she was already out of jail after securing interim bail from the Supreme Court. It also rejected her lawyer’s request to give her 30 days to surrender.
In a 127-page judgment, the court noted that she had created false documents and fabricated records and evidence to frame innocent people in connection with the riots.
She and co-accused and former IPS R.B. Sreekumar were arrested by Gujarat Police in June 2022. She was granted an interim bail by the Supreme Court in September 2022. The top court had asked her to approach the High Court for a regular bail.
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During the course of hearing in the High Court, the State produced voluminous records and testimonies of “witnesses” who told the police that Teesta had forced some riot victims to give false evidence to implicate the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other top functionaries of the State.
The Gujarat Police Special Investigating Team have accused her of hatching a criminal conspiracy with two former IPS R.B. Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt to target the functionaries of the State based on forged papers and fabricated evidence.
She and other two accused were arrested after the Ahmedabad crime branch registered an FIR against Ms. Setalvad, Mr. .Sreekumar and jailed former IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt a day after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging the clean chit given by a SIT to the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in the post-Godhra riots cases.
They were booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 468, 471 (forgery), 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction of capital offence), 211 (institute criminal proceedings to cause injury), 218 (public servant framing incorrect record or writing with intent to save person from punishment or property from forfeiture), and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy).
The police had acted after the Supreme Court had dismissed the petition filed by Zakia Jafri whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed during the riots while observing that “it appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create a sensation by making revelations which were false to their own knowledge.”
All those involved in such abuse of process “need to be in the dock and proceed in accordance with law,” the Supreme Court had said.
