An Ahmedabad court on Thursday dismissed a discharge plea filed by activist Teesta Setalvad in a case of alleged fabrication of evidence in relation to the 2002 Gujarat riots, PTI reported.
Additional sessions Judge AR Patel also said that the trial in the case will begin on July 24.
The development comes a day after the Supreme Court granted regular bail to Setalvad, setting aside an order of the Gujarat High Court rejecting her plea for regular bail and asking her to surrender immediately on July 1. The Supreme Court said that the High Court order was “totally perverse” and “contradictory”.
Setalvad and former state Director General of Police RB Sreekumar were arrested on June 26 last year. Both of them, along with former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt, have been accused of fabricating evidence about the 2002 Gujarat riots with the objective to destabilise the state government.
More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in the riots. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat at the time.
During the hearing in the trial court, the Gujarat government had opposed Setalvad’s discharge plea saying that she drafted affidavits in the names of those who were adversely affected in the 2002 riots to implicate innocent people, including Modi, senior officers and state ministers, reported PTI.
Setalvad’s lawyer, however, had told the court that the affidavits in question had been signed by witnesses and were submitted before various courts.
“These affidavits, therefore, can not be considered as ‘fabricated evidence’,” the lawyer had said.
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