The special investigation team (SIT) probing the case of fabrication of evidence for the purported 2002 riots conspiracy told an Ahmedabad sessions court that social activist Teesta Setalvad, former DGP R B Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt had carried out the larger conspiracy with the political objective of dismissal and destabilization of the then Gujarat government and to wrongly implicate innocent people, including the then chief minister Narendra Modi.
Opposing the bail pleas filed by Setalvad and Sreekumar, SIT filed an affidavit by citing two witnesses and claimed that the conspiracy to malign Gujarat’s image was hatched by them “at the behest of late Ahmed Patel, then Member of Parliament from Rajya Sabha and political advisor of the president of the Indian National Congress”. The affidavit further reads, “The applicant (Setalvad) held a meeting with Ahmed Patel and received Rs 500,000 at the first instance, where the money was given to her by one of the witnesses on the instruction of Patel. ”
The affidavit says, “Two days later, they met at the Circuit House in Shahibaug in Ahmedabad, where she received Rs 25,00,000 more from Patel. This was not for relief work, which was carried out by Gujarat Relief Committee. There were many political leaders at the meeting”. The SIT further claimed that Setalvad visited relief camps within a week of the Godhra train incident and held meetings with political functionaries. She along with Sanjiv Bhatt met Patel at his New Delhi residence four months after the riots “in a clandestine manner”.
Patel acted on Sonia’s dictates: BJP
BJP on Saturday went on the offensive over the report of a SIT alleging payoffs from an opposition party to Setalvad, saying that the findings of the probe team prove Sonia Gandhi's complicity in the plot to defame Modi and prevent him from taking up bigger responsibilities.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra, who was reacting to SIT 's report saying that Setalvad received funds from Sonia's political secretary Patel to implicate leaders of the BJP government in Gujarat in riots cases, dismissed Congress' defence of the late party leader and trained its guns at Sonia calling her the "key conspirator" and the "driving force" behind the conspiracy.
