The Special Investigation Team (SIT) Friday opposed social activist Teesta Setalvad’s bail application in a case related to criminal conspiracy and forgery. An SIT affidavit submitted in the sessions court claims that Setalvad and others including former state director general of police (DGP) RB Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt had accepted Rs 30 lakh from Ahmed Patel, the political advisor of then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, to allegedly frame then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and topple his government.
“The political objective of the applicant (Setalvad) while enacting this larger conspiracy was dismissal or destabilisation of the elected government….She obtained illegal financial and other benefits and rewards from rival political party in lieu of her attempts to wrongly implicate innocent persons in Gujarat,” read the SIT affidavit, as reported by news agency PTI.
"Setalvad used to meet the leaders of a prominent national party in power at that time in Delhi to implicate names of senior leaders of the BJP government in riot cases,” the SIT report further claimed.
The report cited statements by a witness who said that the conspiracy was carried out at the behest of late Ahmed Patel, and that the social activist received Rs 30 lakh at the behest of Patel after the Godhra riots of 2002 to execute the plan.
The affidavit was filed by Mitesh Amin and Amit Patel, the special public prosecutors of SIT ACP BC Solanki, who said the accused had entered into a "larger conspiracy with the intention of obtaining illegal money and other benefits from Congress", reported, ANI.
Last month, the Supreme Court upheld the SIT clean chit to 64 people, including then CM Modi, in the 2002 Gujarat riots case as it dismissed a plea by late Congress leader Ehsan Jafri's wife Zakia Jafri, stating that the petition was devoid of merit.