Ahmedabad crime branch arrests Teesta Setalvad

Ahmedabad: Activist Teesta Setalvad, who was taken into police custody on Saturday, was arrested on Sunday by the Ahmedabad crime branch. She was charged with a fresh case of forgery, criminal conspiracy and insulting criminal proceedings to cause injury, PTI reported.

DCP Chaitanya Mandlik said that the crime branch would gather documents, the 2002 Gujarat riots, submitted by Setalvad and earlier arrested RB Sreekumar and jailed ex IPS officer Sanjay Bhatt at the Commission of Inquiry, the SIT (special investigation team) and courts.

"The investigation is underway in this case, and we are procuring documents submitted by the accused persons before the Commission of Inquiry, SIT (formed by the Supreme Court to investigate 2002 riots cases), and different courts...Affidavits and other documents are the main basis for the FIR, and we are trying to collect other documents as well," he told the media.

Mandlik said that more people might be involved in the criminal conspiracy, and the investigation is rolled out from that angle. He further stated neither Setalvad nor Sreekumar is cooperating with the probe.

Setalvad, who was detained from her house in Mumbai's Juhu on Saturday, was brought to Ahmedabad based on an FIR registered in the Ahmedabad crime branch. "After being brought here, Setalvad was handed over to the city crime branch on Sunday morning. She will soon be placed under arrest," a source from the crime branch told PTI.

DGP Mandlik said, "The FIR is based on the observation made by the Supreme Court in its judgment, which said, 'As a matter of fact, all those involved in such abuse of process need to be in the dock and proceed as per law."

Setalvad is being accused of conspiring to fabricate facts and documents, tutor witnesses and abuse the process of law by fabricating false evidence to frame people, based on the submissions made before the SIT formed by the Supreme Court to investigate the 2002 Gujarat riots cases and before the Justice Nanavati-Shah Commission of Inquiry. Setalvad and her NGO, Citizens for Justice and Peace, were co-petitioners with Zakia Jafri in a plea in Supreme Court challenging the clean chit awarded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others in the Gujarat Riots case. Zakia Jafri is the wife of ex-Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the riots.

The ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt is in jail, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in a custodial death case. Another case of planting contraband to frame a lawyer is also charged against him.

The trio- Setalwad, Sreekumar and Bhatt- were charged with IPC sections 468, 471 (forgery), 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction of capital offence), 211 (institute criminal proceedings to cause injury), 218 (public servant framing incorrect record or writing with intent to save a person from punishment or property from forfeiture), and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.