Ahmedabad, 9 February 2012

“Only court can give a clean chit and not SIT”, said an advocate of Jakia Jafri today while talking to media persons in Ahmedabad’s Metropolitan court campus.

Advocate Vohra said, “we asked the court that a sealed cover application that SIT has submitted should be opened and it should be checked that whether entire material has been submitted as per the Supreme Court order’s para no. 9 or not. If SIT has not submitted the entire material, it should be served notice. Accordingly the SC has served notice to the SIT to appear before the court on 13th of this month when next hearing in this case will be held.”

In another development, advocate Shamshad Pathan representing an NGO Jan Sangharsh Manch sought certified copies of all material submitted by SIT to the court. The court asked Pathan about his connection to this case, to which Pathan told that he represents one of the witnesses Amrish Patel and this report affects him therefore all certified copies should be given to him.

The Judge told the parties that a report had been submitted but he had not read it yet.

What was para 9 that Jafri’s advocate is referring to?

Para 9 of Supreme Court judgement was this: “We direct the Chairman, SIT to forward a final report, along with the entire material collected by the SIT, to the Court which had taken cognizance of Crime Report No.67 of 2002, as required under Section 173(2) of the Code. Before submission of its report, it will be open to the SIT to obtain from the Amicus Curiae copies of his reports submitted to this Court. The said Court will deal with the matter in accordance with law relating to the trial of the accused, named in the report/charge-sheet, including matters falling within the 1 (2007) 1 SCC 110 ambit and scope of Section 173(8) of the Code. However, at this juncture, we deem it necessary to emphasize that if for any stated reason the SIT opines in its report, to be submitted in terms of this order, that there is no sufficient evidence or reasonable grounds for proceeding against any person named in the complaint, dated 8th June 2006, before taking a final decision on such `closure’ report, the Court shall issue notice to the complainant and make available to her copies of the statements of the witnesses, other related documents and the investigation report strictly in accordance with law as enunciated by this Court in Bhagwant Singh Vs. Commissioner of Police & Anr.2. For the sake of ready reference, we may note that in the said decision, it has been held that in a case where the Magistrate to whom a report is forwarded under Section 173(2)(i) of the Code, decides not to take cognizance of the offence and to drop the proceedings or takes a view that there is no sufficient ground for proceeding against some of the persons mentioned in the FIR, the Magistrate must give notice to the informant and provide him an opportunity to be heard at the time of consideration of the report.”

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