[GreenYouth] The real story behind the corruption charges against activist Teesta Setalvad

[Sukla Sen]

I/II.
http://scroll.in/article/the-real-story-behind-the-corruption-charges-against-activist-teesta-setalvad/?id=658902

The real story behind the corruption charges against activist Teesta Setalvad

The real story behind the corruption charges against act...The Gujarat
government wants activist Teesta Setalvad to be interrogated in
custody about charges of embezzling donations collected to build a
communal violence mus... |
|  |
| View on scroll.in | Preview by Yahoo |
|  |
|   |

On Thursday, the Gujarat High Court adjourned the hearing of a case
filed by Zakia Jafri, which seeks to have charges framed against
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and 59 others for their alleged
involvement in  the 2002 riots. A lower court had previously dismissed
her case challenging the report of a Supreme Court-appointed Special
Investigation Team stating that there is no prosecutable evidence
against Modi.

The case was adjourned because the Gujarat government said it needed
time to come up with a response. "We need time to go through the
voluminous records of the case," the state prosecutor argued. Jafri's
lawyers said the government could be issued a notice and could then be
given time to reply, but the court said it would hear the matter again
on April 11.

Zakia Jafri is no stranger to waiting. On 28 February 2002, her
husband Ehsan Jafri, a Congress politician and former Parliamentarian,
was dragged out of his home in Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on
February 28, 2002, to be hacked and burned to death. Sixty nine people
died in Gulberg Society that day.

The 2002 riots in Gujarat have the distinction of being the only
instance of communal violence for which some amount of justice can be
said to have been dealt. One hundred and seventeen perpetrators have
been convicted, including a serving minister in the Gujarat
government. Because of the Supreme Court, some of the most heinous
cases during the riots have been reopened for investigation. Yet that
hasn't brought justice for all victims of the 2002 violence. Like
Jafri, many believe the pogrom in 2002, of which Gulberg Society was
only one incident, would not have happened without chief minister
Narendra Modi's tacit approval. If Jafri's legal efforts succeed, the
powerful chief minister and the Bharatiya Janata party's candidate for
the position of India's prime minister could be brought to trial on up
to 15 charges .

So far, the Gujarat government and the BJP have used the SIT report to
claim that the chief minister has been given a "clean chit" by the
country's criminal justice system. "Nothing will come of the case,"
said Harshad Patel, a BJP spokesperson in Ahmedabad told Scroll.in.
"The clean chit has come, now the courts will also decide on that."

The backlash
Zakia Jafri does not speak to the media these days, but the source of
her courage and patience is well-known. The source works from an
office in Mumbai's Juhu area. To reach the office, one has to walk
past guards of the Central Reserve Paramilitary Force. It is a small
but furiously organised office. At the heart of this space is activist
and former journalist Teesta Setalvad, who is among the
founder-trustees of the two organisations that run from here, Sabrang
Trust and the Citizens for Justice and Peace.

Citizens for Justice and Peace was set up on 1 April 2002, in the
immediate aftermath of the Gujarat riots, to promote communal harmony.
It is among the few organisations that provides legal aid to the
survivors of the 2002 riots and has been instrumental in obtaining the
117 convictions that have come so far. Its sister organisation,
Sabrang Trust, was established after the 1992-'93 communal violence in
the city then known as Bombay.

Right now, Setalvad is battling heavy fire from Ahmedabad. In January,
the Ahmedabad police registered a First Information Report against
Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand for allegedly cheating residents
of Gulberg Society of money collected in 2008 by Sabrang Trust and
Citizens in for Justice and Peace. The money was collected to convert
Gulberg Society into "a museum of resistance". The call for donations
explained the idea: "For nearly six years now, more than a hundred
thousand survivors of independent India's state-sponsored carnage in
the western Indian state of Gujarat have been denied dignified
acknowledgement of, or reparation for, the magnitude of indignity and
violence they suffered. With the BJP's recent electoral victory in the
state, the pain and humiliation of the victim survivors has been
further exacerbated. A quiet yet dignified and firm resistance to this
state callousness and impunity lies at the heart of this idea of
resistance."

This FIR was registered in response to a nine-month-old complaint by
some former residents of Gulberg Society. The complainants had said
they were not being given the money collected in their name, even as
they lived in penury. Anand and Setalvad had responded to the
complaint in May 2013, clarifying their accou

[GreenYouth] The real story behind the corruption charges against activist Teesta Setalvad

[Sukla Sen]

http://scroll.in/article/the-real-story-behind-the-corruption-charges-against-activist-teesta-setalvad?id=658902

2002 gujarat riots
 The real story behind the corruption charges against activist Teesta
Setalvad
*Mridula Chari*


*The Gujarat government wants activist Teesta Setalvad to be interrogated
in custody about charges of embezzling donations collected to build a
communal violence museum. But the charges against Setalvad seem to be an
attempt to intimidate her to withdraw cases she has helped Zakia Jafri to
file against Narendra Modi. On Thursday, the Gujarat High Court adjourned
the hearing of a case filed by Zakia Jafri, which seeks to have charges
framed against Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and 59 others for their
alleged involvement in  the 2002 riots. A lower court had previously
dismissed her case challenging the report of a Supreme Court-appointed
Special Investigation Team stating that there is no prosecutable evidence
against Modi.*
The case was adjourned because the Gujarat government said it needed time
to come up with a response. "We need time to go through the voluminous
records of the case," the state prosecutor argued. Jafri's lawyers said the
government could be issued a notice and could then be given time to reply,
but the court said it would hear the matter again on April 11.

Zakia Jafri is no stranger to waiting. On 28 February 2002, her husband
Ehsan Jafri, a Congress politician and former Parliamentarian, was dragged
out of his home in Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002, to be
hacked and burned to death. Sixty nine people died in Gulberg Society that
day.

The 2002 riots in Gujarat have the distinction of being the only instance
of communal violence for which some amount of justice can be said to have
been dealt. One hundred and seventeen perpetrators have been convicted,
including a serving minister in the Gujarat government. Because of the
Supreme Court, some of the most heinous cases during the riots have been
reopened for investigation. Yet that hasn't brought justice for all victims
of the 2002 violence. Like Jafri, many believe the pogrom in 2002, of which
Gulberg Society was only one incident, would not have happened had chief
minister Narendra Modi failed to allowed it. If Jafri's legal efforts
succeed, the powerful chief minister and the Bharatiya Janata party's
candidate for the position of India's prime minister could be brought to
trial on up to 15 charges  .

So far, the Gujarat government and the BJP have used the SIT report to
claim that the chief minister has been given a "clean chit" by the
country's criminal justice system. "Nothing will come of the case," said
Harshad Patel, a BJP spokesperson in Ahmedabad told Scroll.in. "The clean
chit has come, now the courts will also decide on that."

*The backlash*
Zakia Jafri does not speak to the media these days, but the source of her
courage and patience is well-known. The source works from an office in
Mumbai's Juhu area. To reach the office, one has to walk past guards of the
Central Reserve Paramilitary Force. It is a small but furiously organised
office. At the heart of this space is activist and former journalist Teesta
Setalvad, who is among the founder-trustees of the two organisations that
run from here, Sabrang Trust and the Citizens for Justice and Peace.

Citizens for Justice and Peace was set up on 1 April 2002, in the immediate
aftermath of the Gujarat riots, to promote communal harmony. It is among
the few organisations that provides legal aid to the survivors of the 2002
riots and has been instrumental in obtaining the 117 convictions that have
come so far. Its sister organisation, Sabrang Trust, was established after
the 1992-'93 communal violence in the city then known as Bombay.

Right now, Setalvad is battling heavy fire from Ahmedabad. In January, the
Ahmedabad police registered a First Information Report against
Setalvadand
her husband Javed Anand for allegedly cheating residents of Gulberg
Society of money collected in 2008 by Sabrang Trust and Citizens in for
Justice and Peace. The money was collected to convert Gulberg Society into
"a museum of resistance". The call for donations explained the idea: "For
nearly six years now, more than a hundred thousand survivors of independent
India's state-sponsored carnage in the western Indian state of Gujarat have
been denied dignified acknowledgement of, or reparation for, the magnitude
of indignity and violence they suffered. With the BJP's recent electoral
victory in the state, the pain and humiliation of the victim survivors has
been further exacerbated. A quiet yet dignified and firm resistance to this
state callousness and impunity lies at the heart of this idea of
resistance."

This FIR was 
registeredin