Gujarat govt filed fake case against Teesta: SC

Supreme Court on Tuesday severely criticised Gujarat government for vicimising the social activist Teesta Setalvad by filing a frivolous case against her alleging her role in illegal exhumation of the bodies of the 2002 riot victims.

"This is a hundred per cent spurious case to victimise the petitioner (Setalvad)," said a bench of justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai.

The court came down heavily on the Narendra Modi government for initiating a probe against her stating that these types of cases does not credit to the state government.

The bench told the senior advocate Pradeep Ghosh, who appeared for the Gujarat government, that it was not correct on the part of the state government to go ahead with the case.

You advise your client not to proceed with this type of case. You should show some responsibility and tell the government not to proceed with the case," the bench said.

The court posted the matter for March 23 and asked the state counsel to read the FIR dispassionately and give his opinion as an officer of the court.

Setalvad had approached the apex court after the Gujarat high court on May 27 refused to quash the FIR registered against her.

However, the high court had quashed the summons, which had termed her as absconding.

The FIR had claimed that Teesta Setalvad had actually planned and executed the operation of digging of graves near Pandarwada through her staff.

The Lunawada mass grave digging case refers to an incident Dec 27, 2005 when some locals had dug up 28 unclaimed bodies near the bed of the Panam river at Lunawada in Panchmahal district of Gujarat.

Claiming that the bodies were of the missing victims of the Pandharwada Massacre and that they were their relatives, they had then reburied the bodies according to Islamic rites.