Ahmedabad: The Nanavati-Mehta Commission on Saturday refused to issue a notice to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to depose before it in the 2002 post-Godhra riots case.
The two-member Commission comprising of retired Justices G T Nanavati and Akshay Mehta, which is probing the Godhra train carnage in 2002 and the riots in Gujarat that followed, has asked all officials and ministers in the Modi government to file affidavit regarding telephonic data during the riots.
The Jan Sangharsh Manch that is representing the riot victims had moved an application in 2007 before the Commission for summoning Modi and others, on the ground that mobile phone records showed several conversations between his close aides, senior police officers and Hindu leaders allegedly involved in the massacre.
Social activist Teesta Setalvad told CNN-IBN that after its refusal to issue a notice to Modi the Nanavati Commission had lost all credibility.
"For a judicial commission that was appointed to probe the Godhra case, the Nanavati Commission has completely lost credibility. For the first time affidavits have been filed by the senior officers and it is shameful that the Commission still does not consider it necessary to question the Chief Minister. It is unfortunate but predictable. The real probe at the moment is the one ordered by the Supreme Court in the Ahsan Jaffri and CJP case where Modi and 61 others are being investigated," she claimed.
Teesta also likened the Nanavati Commission to a farce, saying, "For two-and-a-half-years, attempts have been made to get the CM to depose before the commission. When you have indicting affidavits about the Machiavellian role of the CM, then the commission is bound under law to summon him to depose before it. By not doing so it is reducing itself to a farce."
(With inputs from Meghdoot Sharon)
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