Ahmedabad Metropolitan magistrate BJ Ganatra today pronounced verdict on Zakia Jafri’s plea against the closure report of the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) giving a clean chit to the Gujarat Chief Minister and others in the alleged conspiracy behind the 2002 riots, and gave the nation the much awaited closure in this painful chapter. It is, of course, too soon to say if the activists who have hounded Narendra Modi so doggedly this past decade will accept the verdict with grace, or launch a new spiral of accusations.

The news comes close on the heels of the Central Bureau of Investigation’s inability to find any prosecutable (read real) evidence against the former Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, in the Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter case, which has ended in a whimper. Experts say that the probe into the hyperventilated allegations known as snoop-gate, in which Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are again sought to be implicated, which was ordered by the UPA today, will end in a similar dead end.

However, the ability of the Congress and its fellow travellers, particularly the well-funded network of NGOs and activists, to unleash a fresh high decibel campaign to drown voices of reason and sanity cannot be underestimated. Indeed, the public discourse for over a decade has been so vitiated that it has not been possible to point out that the mob gathered outside the Gulberg housing society could have been provoked by former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri firing his pistol at the crowd.

Certainly the deaths of Ehasan Jafri and all who perished in the burning of bogies of the Sabarmati Express and the post-Godhra riots is a huge tragedy, but for how long could the judicial system allow itself to be hijacked by agenda-driven activists? The Zakia Jafri case against the Gujarat Chief Minister was always weak (read baseless) and the secularists routinely hushed up the fact that she has always missed the deadline for filing appealing and sustained her case by emotionalism. After all these years of failing to establish any credible case on any issue, citizens have a right to ask if the Indian judiciary would bestow so much indulgence upon victims not backed by political activism. The Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad comprised of 29 bungalows and 10 apartment blocks. On February 28, 2002, the day after the burning of two coaches of the Sabarmati Express, it was attacked by a mob, leading to the deaths of 69 persons, including former MP Ehsan Jafri. The Supreme Court intervened in the investigations in 2006, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in power.

Instigated by vocal activists, Ehsan Jafri’s widow, Zakia Jafri, wrote to the Director General of Police in June 8, 2006, seeking an FIR against Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 63 others for conspiracy in the 2002 riots. When the DGP refused, she moved the Gujarat High Court on May 1, 2007; this was dismissed on November 2, 2007. She then moved the Supreme Court.

On April 27, 2009, the Supreme Court asked the Special Investigation Team (SIT) under former CBI director RK Raghavan to look into the complaint and report to the court; the SIT accordingly conducted a probe and even questioned Narendra Modi in its own office in Gandhinagar on March 27, 2010. On May 14, 2010, the SIT submitted its report to the Supreme Court, which gave a copy to the then amicus curie Prashant Bhushan. The BJP questioned Bhushan’s impartiality; he quit on October 26, 2010 after which Raju Ramachandran was appointed amicus curie. He pointed out some lacunas in the SIT report. Thereafter, on March 15, 2011, the Supreme Court gave instruction to the SIT, which again submitted its report on April 25, 2011. The report was given to the amicus curie on May 5, and he was allowed to question witnesses.

Ramachandran visited Ahmedabad on June 18, 2011, and submitted his own report to the apex court on July 25, 2011. Finally, on September 12, 2011, the Supreme Court directed the SIT to submit its final report to the lower court. Its verdict has now come in. The SIT report immediately became contentious as it absolved Narendra Modi of any conspiracy in the riots and sought closure of the case on grounds that no direct or circumstantial evidence could be found in support of the allegation that the accused hatched a conspiracy to create the riots. When Zakia Jafri challenged the closure report, SIT counsel RS Jamuar countered that the testimonies of three IPS officers, RB Shreekumar, Sanjiv Bhat, and Rahul Sharma, whom Jafri cited as witnesses, had no evidentiary value. Jamuar argued that the three officers bore personal grudges against the Chief Minister and even conspired to fabricate evidence to malign him. It has since been established that Sanjiv Bhatt was not speaking the truth when he claimed to have been personally present in a meeting in which Narendra Modi allegedly called for retaliation for the train burning; the Union Home Ministry subsequently sanctioned his dismissal from service.

More pertinently, Jamuar asserted that the SIT was not mandated by the apex court to examine any conspiracy angle of the post-Godhra riots. Its task was to probe nine cases, including the Godhra train burning; it had completed investigations in six cases in which judgements were also delivered. Appeals in those cases are currently pending before the Gujarat High Court. Jafri’s counsel, however, accused the SIT of shielding the powerful accused. Activists in the 2002 Gujarat riots have found the SIT closure report unpalatable since its submission last April, essentially because it noted that former MP Ehsan Jafri was killed after he fired at the gathering outside the housing complex, which provoked the mob to storm the society and set it on fire.

A largely unnoticed aspect of Zakia Jafri’s vigilantism is that she often made major mistakes in her testimony and was obviously under pressure to continue her harangue against the Chief Minister. She once alleged that Narendra Modi gave instructions to officials in a meeting at his residence on the night of February 27, 2002, to the effect that Hindus should be allowed to vent anger for what happened at Godhra. The officials whom she claimed attended this meeting included the then chief secretary G Subbarao and the Chief Minister’s secretary AK Sharma; this was found to be incorrect. Jafri also claimed that the state government sanctioned sexual violence against women. In reality, many victims told the trial court that they had not been raped and had no idea that this allegation was made in the affidavits that were written in English and had been signed by them in good faith. Another allegation made by Jafri was that the burned bodies of the 59 victims of the Godhra carnage were brought to Ahmedabad in a ceremonial procession to inflame Hindu passions. The truth is that the bodies were brought quietly to Ahmedabad’s western outskirts and handed over to the relatives.

Today, however, the metropolitan magistrate’s decision has hopefully brought closure on an unseemly chapter of one-sided allegations and recriminations.