Supreme Court’s judgment in Zakia Ahsan Jafri versus State of Gujarat bodes ill for democracy
Published on: 27 June 2022, 02:05 pm
The Supreme Court has travelled a long way from linking the killings to 'modern day Neroes' to seeing the very struggle for justice as having the 'audacity' to 'question the integrity of every functionary'.
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Senior advocate Fali S. Nariman, described civil rights activist and journalist Teesta Setalvad as a "foot soldier of the Indian Constitution". Today, the foot soldier has been arrested for zealously pursuing justice for one of independent India's most egregious wrongs, namely the Gujarat pogrom, which was unleashed following the Godhra train burning of February 27, 2002.
The instigation for Setalvad's arrest is a paragraph in the Supreme Court's judgment of the Supreme Court of last Friday (delivered, ironically, a day before the 47th anniversary of the emergency) dismissing the appeal by Zakia Jafri, widow of former Parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri who was slain before her during the pogrom. Jafri had petitioned for an investigation into the conspiracy behind the pogrom.