SC verdict disappointing; Ehsan Jafri’s murder result of lapse by Gujarat govt: Jairam Ramesh

Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament and General Secretary In-Charge, Communications AICC has termed the Supreme Court’s recent verdict in the Zakia Jafri case as ‘disappointing’ and said some important questions about the Gujarat riots remained unanswered.

In a statement released on Monday, he posed the following three questions:

1. What is the constitutional & moral responsibility of the Chief Minister and state govt in cases of large-scale communal riots?

2. Is the responsibility in such cases only ever that of the Collector and Deputy Commissioner of Police and not of political executive?

3. Will the Chief Minister, Cabinet and state govt never be held accountable, even if a state is thrown into a circle of violence & riots?

“We stand by our colleague, the late Ehsan Jafri and his family in this hour. What happened to him in a most tragic manner was the result of a fundamental lapse on the part of the state government,” Ramesh said.

He went on to list five questions that he said will continue to haunt the Prime Minister:

● Was Shri Narendra Modi not the Chief Minister of Gujarat when the horrific riots took place in 2002?

● Why was PM Vajpayee so affected by his lack of action that he had to publicly remind him to do his duty, to follow his ‘Rajdharma’?

● Was it not the Supreme Court who called out the conduct of the Modi Government in Gujarat as that of “Modern day Nero’s (who) were looking elsewhere when… innocent children and helpless women were burning, and were probably deliberating how the perpetrators of the crime can be saved or protected”?

● Why did sections of the BJP, including now member of the Modi Cabinet, Smt. Smriti Irani protest and call for his dismissal as CM if he was not guilty of any wrongdoing?

● What about all the numerous convictions that have been carried out on the basis of the evidence collected by the SIT relating to the Gujarat riots? Can the BJP claim that those also stand invalidated?

“No amount of propaganda by the BJP can ever erase these facts,” Jairam Ramesh concluded.