After being arrested for allegedly fabricating documents to frame high ranking officials and the then CM of Gujarat Narendra Modi in Gujarat Riots of 2002,the Human Right activist Teesta Setalvad has moved to the Supreme Court seeking bail.
The Gujarat High Court on August 2 this year, issued notice to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) asking it to respond to the bail applications filed by Setalvad and former Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP) RB Sreekumar.
The High court has put this matter to be heard on September 19.The Human Right activist has taken objection for such a long gap for her hearing and has appealed before the Apex court.
Teesta cited a judgement of Supreme Court (Satendar Kumar Antil v. CBI, bail matters) which says thy a case must be heard expeditiously.
The plea said that “Despite the same, the first date fixed by Hon’ble High Court in the present case is after one and a half months.”
The appeal was put before a Bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justice Krishna Murari and Justice Hima Kohli this morning. A decision was taken to list the case before a Bench headed by Justice UU Laliton August 22.
The Supreme Court this year on June 24 had dismissed the plea by Zakia Jafri,the wife of Ehsan Jafri for wet member of Congress who had challenged the 2017 decision of Gujarat High court to uphold the Magistrate’s decision to accept the closure report filed by the SIT in the case.
The Apex court after dismissing the plea, had made observations against Setalvad and former DGP Sreekumar, terming them “disgruntled”.
The judgement had said that “At the end of the day, it appears to us that a coalesced effort of the disgruntled officials of the State of Gujarat along with others was to create sensation by making revelations which were false to their own knowledge. The falsity of their claims had been fully exposed by the SIT after a thorough investigation.”
The court had also said that such officials need to be in the dock for “keeping the pot boiling” with ulterior motives.