A team from Gujarat Police today conducted a search of Teesta Setalvad’s residence in Mumbai. The activist was arrested on Saturday and handed off to Ahmedabad Crime Branch on Sunday. She, along with retired police officials ADGP R.B Sreekumar and DIG Sanjiv Bhatt, have been charged for allegedly conspiring to fabricate facts and documents and tutor witnesses in the 2002 Gujarat Riots Case. The three have also been accused of abusing the process of law by making up false evidence to frame people.
According to sources, Mumbai’s Santacruz police station assisted the Gujarat police in the search but was kept in the dark on what they were looking for. The search of Setalvad’s house around 11:00 AM this morning. The search lasted for more than two-and-a-half hours.
Setalvad, who is the secretary of NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace, was arrested a day after the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge brought by Zakia Ehsan Jafri that contested the SIT’s closure report and threw out claims of a bigger plot involving high-ranking officials and other parties in the Gujarat riots of 2002, which followed the Godhra train massacre. Setalvad and her NGO were co-petitioners with Zakia Jafri in the petition filed against Modi and others in the apex court. Jafri’s husband, a former Congress MP, Ehsan Jafri was killed during the riots.
