Gujarat ATS reaches activist Teesta Setalvad at her house in Mumbai for a foreign fund case.
o Gujarat Anti Terror Squad detains activist Teesta Setalvad in connection to a foreign fund case that involves her NGO.Â
o  The detention has come after Home Minister Amit Shah in his interview with ANI, slammed Teesta Setalvad for providing baseless information about Gujarat Riots.Â
Conspiracy to forge evidenceÂ
The Gujarat ATS on Saturday detained activist Teesta Setalvad from her house in connection with a foreign fund case related to her NGO. Setalvad‘s NGO had provided information about the 2002 Gujarat riots and her name has been mentioned in the Supreme Court judgment which upheld the Special Investigation Team’s SIT’s clean chit to Narendra Modi. The move of the Gujarat ATS comes hours after Union home minister Amit Shah in his interview with news agency ANI, slammed Teesta Setalvad for giving baseless information about the Gujarat riots.Â
On Friday, the apex court upheld the clean chit in February 2012 to then chief minister Narendra Modi and others in connection with the 2002 Gujarat riots. In the immediate aftermath of the judgment, an FIR was registered on Saturday, based on a complaint by police inspector DB Barad against activist Teesta Setalvad, former additional director general of police, RB Sreekumar and former deputy inspector general of police, Sanjeev Bhatt. A day later, Gujarat police detained Setalvad, and Sreekumar from their residences in Mumbai and Gujarat respectively.
Based on Barad’s complaint, the Ahmedabad city crime branch on Saturday registered an offense against Bhatt, Sreekumar and Setalvad under sections 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence), 218 (public servant framing incorrect record), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 211 (false charge of offense made with intent to injure), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) read with 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.Â
Setalvad, Sreekumar detained
On Saturday, officials of the Gujarat ATS)reached Setalvad’s residence on Juhu’s Tara road around 2.30 pm, taking her into custody and informing the Santacruz police about her detention. In a letter written to a senior police inspector of Santacruz police station, Setalvad alleged that some officers of Gujarat police especially one named J M Patel and a lady officer entered her bedroom and assaulted her. Gujarat police officials said that the state Crime Branch had reached out to the ATS to carry out the detention because some of their officials were in Mumbai at the time. Sreekumar, they said, was detained by the Crime Branch from his residence in Gandhinagar.
Ahmedabad crime branch’s Barad alleged in his complaint that Setalvad had fabricated facts, documents, and evidence; influencing and tutoring witnesses, making them depose on pre-typed affidavits. It also highlights SIT remarks in one of its supplementary reports claiming that 19 witnesses in the Gulbarg Society case pre-signed statements to be taken on record.Â
Sanjeev Bhatt and Sreekumar were also accused of providing false information to the SIT. Bhatt had in 2011 allegedly made a false claim before the SIT that he had attended a meeting at then chief minister Modi’s residence on February 27, 2002, after which a railway bogie, carrying karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, was burnt down at Godhra, resulting in several deaths. It was reported that he had relied on false and fabricated documents to substantiate his claims.
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected the appeal by Zakia Jafri, wife of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gujarat violence, and said that the appeal was “devoid of merits.” A three-judge bench headed by Justice AM Khanwilkar, upholding the Special Investigation Team or SIT’s 2012 clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Gujarat riots case, said that Setalvad, co-petitioner in the case, exploited the emotions of Zakia Jafri.
