Narendra Modi

New Delhi, Aug. 19: The Supreme Court today permitted the Special Investigation Team (SIT) inquiring into the 2002 Gujarat riots to “further probe” the complaint of the wife of a former Congress MP who was among those killed.

Zakia Jafri’s complaint names chief minister Narendra Modi, former ministers of state for home Gordhan Zadaphia and Amit Shah and 60 others as the key conspirators of the murder of her husband and several others.

Some 40 people were killed by rioters who set fire to a predominantly Muslim housing society, Gulbarga, in Ahmedabad in 2002. Former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who kept pleading over phone with top officials to rush security to the building, was among the dead.

Zakia had moved the Supreme Court in 2006 seeking a probe into her husband’s death. The court referred the complaint to the SIT on April 27, 2009.

Among the others named in the complaint are Maya Kodnani, who had to quit the Modi cabinet and surrender before the SIT, and VHP leader Jaideep Patel.

The SIT, headed by former CBI director R.K. Raghavan, questioned Modi in March this year.

Today, the SIT submitted a report on the investigations and sought permission to further probe the case. It said it had found evidence against three accused and needed more time to probe the charges against other accused.

A special bench of Justices D.K. Jain, Aftab Alam and P. Sathasivam, after going through the report, granted the request. What the SIT has done so far seems to be in the nature of a “preliminary inquiry”, Justice Jain said at one point.

While the SIT has not publicly named the three against whom it has found evidence already, sources said Modi and Shah do not figure among them.

In a partial relief for the chief minister, the Supreme Court directed the SIT not to share the contents of his statement before it with the Nanavati Commission. This will only be shared with the public prosecutor and the trial court, it said. After the Nanavati Commission, also inquiring into the Gujarat riots, asked for details of Modi’s statement, the SIT had sought a directive from the court.

Today’s order portends more trouble for Modi and his confidant Shah, who is already at the centre of a court-directed investigation by the CBI in another case — the Sohrabuddin fake encounter killing. In that case, Sohrabuddin and his wife and a witness to their abduction were eliminated one by one by Gujarat police ostensibly as part of a “larger conspiracy”.

On August 12, the top court had granted three more months to the CBI to probe the larger conspiracy behind the killings. Shah has already resigned as minister of state for home and has been questioned in the case.

On September 30, the CBI is to submit another report on the Gujarat riots in the Supreme Court.