Former Chief Secretary Subha Rao, Former Health Minister Ashok Bhat, Former Urban Development Minister IK Jadeja, Former MOS Home Govardhan Zadaphiya, Former MLA Haresh Bhat, Naran Laloo Patel, Kaushik Jamnadas Patel, Chief Minister Narendra Modi should be compelled by the Nanavati Shah Mehta Commission to file affidavits disclosing their roles in the conspiracy on, before and after 27.2.2002. Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace stated this in her submissions before the Nanavati Shah Mehta Commission.
The second terms of reference asking for the role of “chief minister Modi and his cabinet to be probed” (dated July 2004) should have ensured that senior civil servants and policemen filed second affidavits before the Commission. Especially former ACS Home Ashok Narayan, DGP Chakravarti, Commissioners of Police Kaushik and Pande have consciously not filed a second affidavit that could expose the role of the chief minister and his cabinet.
Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) through its Secretary Teesta Setalvad made oral submissions before the Nanavati Shah Mehta Commission asking for an inquiry into the destruction of original police control room records by the Gujarat Police in 2007 while the Commission was in existence and the Apex Court had been seized of the matter since 2002.
Setalvad also asked for the entire records of the Commissioner of Police Ahmedabad Exchange, a set of special phone numbers manned by Control Room Staff that has a facility of direct communications of senior officers (office and residence) police and chowkies be summoned, examined and analysed.
Her submissions were an elaboration of the detailed documentary evidence filed before the Commission on May 14 and 24, 2010.
Justice Nanavati observed that the Commission would probe the massive destruction of evidence by the State.
Setalvad also pointed out that the Editor’s Guild Report on media and press coverage at the relevant time needed to be examined especially in connection with the Transcript of the TV comment by chief minister Narendra Modi on Zee television where he espoused the “action and reaction theory.” In this report, the fact that Modi had selectively congratulated those newspaper barons who had inflamed passions and not those who had played a responsible role was also relevant. She prayed that Falgun Patel, Sreyans Shah, Kiran, Vadodaaria, Ashish Kothari and Aziz Tankarvi should also be summoned.
Annexed to these submissions were detailed analysis and graphs of individual phone call records, records of the Top Cops and most significantly of Narendra Modi’s office and residence and the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO). Then CP PC Pande received 15 calls from the CMO between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the height of the violence in Ahmedabad. Key political functionaries were also in areas like Naroda and Meghaninagar – not known to be communally sensitive – the day before the massacre raising suspicions. Meghaninagar police station recorded only two calls for the whole day of 28.2.2002 suggesting that the phone was put off the hook.
There are contradictory statements made by joint commissioner of police (2002) MK Tandon on oath before the Commission and before the Trial Court hearing the Gulberg case. These need to be examined, Setalvad said. The hearing lasted one hour and a half hour minutes.