Former Supreme Court judge Justice Girish Thakorlal Nanavati died on Saturday of a cardiac failure at 1:15 pm in Gujarat. Nanavati had investigated the 1984 anti-Sikh and the 2002 Gujarat riots. He was 86.
Nanavati was born on February 17, 1935. He enrolled as an advocate in the Bombay High Court on February 11, 1958. He was appointed as a permanent judge of the Gujarat High Court from July 19, 1979, and then transferred to the Orissa High Court on December 14, 1993. He was appointed as the chief justice of the Orissa High Court with effect from January 31, 1994. He was transferred as chief justice of the Karnataka High Court from September 28, 1994. Nanavati also served the Supreme Court where he was appointed as a judge with effect from March 6, 1995. He retired from the SC on February 16, 2000.
Justices Nanavati, together with Akshay Mehta, had interrogated the 2002 Gujarat riots wherein over 1000 people, mostly from the minority Muslim community, were killed. They submitted their final report to the then Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel in 2014. The commission was appointed by then chief minister Narendra Modi to probe the riots in 2002. He was also the sole member of the Nanavati commission appointed by the NDA government to probe the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.