FIR: Teesta Setalvad concocted evidence, tutored Zakia Jafri | India News

AHMEDABAD : Social activist Teesta Setalvad, who had been extending legal assistance to Zakia Jafri, the widow of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre in 2002, has been accused of tutoring Zakia Jafri. The accusations are based on Jafri’s cross-examination during the Gulbarg Society massacre trial.
The FIR states that Setalvad “had conjured, concocted, forged, fabricated facts and documents or evidence, including documents by prospective witnesses of the complainant”. She has been accused of influencing and tutoring witnesses and making them depose on pretyped affidavits.

The complaint even cites a Gujarat high court order of 2011 to try and substantiate this allegation.
The FIR claims that Jafri herself admitted in crossexamination during the criminal trial for the killings of 69 people at Gulbarg Society that she had followed Setalvad’s instructions in filing the complaint and pursuing the litigation.
The FIR says as many as 19 witnesses insisted before the Special Investigation Team that the probe agency accept their typed statements, prepared by Setalvad and advocate M M Tirmizi. These witnesses did not show a willingness to give their own statements. Their testimonials were stereotyped, and the witnesses had merely signed them.
Setalvad and her NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), have been at the forefront in the legal battle for the riots survivors, especially in the Gulbarg Society massacre case.
The FIR also claims that the then DIG, Sanjiv Bhatt, who claimed he was at a meeting at the residence of then CM Narendra Modi on the day of the Godhra carnage, “forged” the alert message produced before the Godhra inquiry commission and later before the SIT. “This act of forgery was done by Sanjiv Bhatt with the express intent of falsely implicating various persons under grave sections of law,” the FIR reads, adding that Bhatt’s claim about his presence at the meeting at the CM’s residence was found to be false. The FIR alleges that Bhatt used fabricated material to prove his presence at the meeting.