Guj court to pronounce order on Zakia's plea on Oct 30

A local court on Thursday reserved its order for October 30 on a plea filed by Zakia Jafri, wife of the slain former Congress Member of Parliament Ehsan Jafri, seeking more time to file 'protest petition' against the closure report of Special Investigation Team which gave clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in 2002 riot cases.

Metropolitan Magistrate B J Ganatra will pronounce his order on Tuesday. Zakia has sought more time to file the protest petition on the ground that she has filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking clarification on certain issues.

On October 17, while granting a week's time to her, the court had sought information about the status of the petition before the SC. On Thursday, advocate S M Vora, representing Zakia, said after the Supreme Court's order on her petition, the SIT may have to produce some more documents related to its probe of the riot cases.

Zakia has sought copy of interim report filed by member SIT, A K Malhotra, in the Supreme Court, and some other documents. SIT has opposed the demand.

"Looking at the past three orders of this court and line of arguments by SIT, it appears that there is an impression that our complaint was only limited to Gulberg Society massacre (in which Ehsan Jafri died), whereas in fact we had complained about the role of CM and others in the state-wide riots," said Vora.

"This prompted us to move Supreme Court to seek clarification that its order on Zakia's case (ordering the SIT probe) is not only restricted to Gulberg Society," he said.