The
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said in June 2002, that it was "deeply disturbed by recent press reports stating that the
chargesheets filed thus far in respect of the Gulbarg Society and
Naroda Patiya incidents lack credibility in as much as they are reported to depict the victims (Muslims) of violence as the provocateurs." NHRC had previously recommended that cases like
Best Bakery case, Gulbarg Society case, the
Naroda Patiya incident and the Sardarpura case in
Mehsana district be handed over to CBI. The Supreme Court, on 26 March 2008, ordered the
Narendra Modi government to re-investigate ten cases in the 2002 Gujarat riots, including the
Godhra train burning and subsequent
Godhra riots, where 81 people were killed, Gulbarg Society where 68 were killed, Naroda Patia where over 100 were killed, Sardarpur where 34 were killed and Best Bakery case where 14 people were burnt alive. Zakiya Jafri, wife of Ehsan Jafri, who was burnt alive on the day, first made the complaint on 8 June 2006 alleging that the police had not registered the FIRs against
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and 62 others including several ministers and alleging a conspiracy to allow the massacre of Muslims, which involved instructing policemen and bureaucrats not to respond to pleas for help from Muslims being attacked during the riots. The complaint included
Vishva Hindu Parishad leaders
Praveen Togadia and
Jaideep Patel,
Director General of Police (DGP) of the state PC Pande for abetting the riots. She then approached the
Gujarat High Court with her complaint, which on 3 November 2007, refused to entertain her plea, and instead asked her to present the case before magistrate's court. Subsequently, she approached the Supreme Court of India, which on 27 April 2009 appointed a five-member SIT headed by R. K. Raghavan, a former head of the CBI, to investigate into these cases, and asked the SIT to look into her complaint of alleged collusion of the state machinery and the rioters over the two days of Gujarat riots. In March 2009,
Indian National Congress leader Meghsingh Chaudhary at the instance of SIT was arrested for active participation in the Gulbarg Society massacre. It alleged that he was a part of the armed mob, egging them on to kill the Muslims, along with others. Then in March 2010, SIT summoned Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to give an explanation regarding accusations against him in the murder of
Ehsan Jaffri, who was burnt alive, along with nearly 70 other people in the Gulbarg Society. He appeared before the SIT on 27 Mar 2010. Earlier, R B Sreekumar, who was Additional Director General of Intelligence at the time, deposed before a commission that ministers and police were "deliberately inactive during the riots" and two eyewitnesses Roopa Modi and Imtiyaz Pathan testified against Modi in the trial court. Imtiaz who lost six members of his family during the massacre, was the one to give the first eyewitness account in the trial which started in September 2009, after being held up for 7 years. He told the court that when a mob started gathering outside Gulbarg Society on 28 February, MP Jafri called Chief Minister Narendra Modi for help, yet the police refused to come for help. He identified 20 of the 100 accused, arrested in the case. In all, the eyewitness who appeared before the SIT in December 2009, namely, Imtiyaz Pathan, Saeedkhan Pathan, Roopa Mody, Saira Sandhi and Rafiq Pathan named joint commissioner of police MK Tandon and Meghaninagar police inspector ND Parmar, Manish Patel alias Splendor, Mahendra Pukhraj, Jagroopsinh Rajput, Inio Harijan, Babu Marwadi and Rajesh Jinger, a constable residing in the same area, as accused. In March 2010, the Gulbarg Society case trial was stayed by the Supreme Court after the special public prosecutor R K Shah resigned after accusing the trial judge and SIT of being "soft on the accused". He alleged that, "The SIT officers are unsympathetic towards witnesses, they try to browbeat them and don't share evidence with the prosecution as they are supposed to do." Later, activist
Teesta Setalvad in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court on 24 April 2010, showed the phone record analysis which indicated that "Ahmedabad
police commissioner P C Pande had spoken to
Joint Commissioner of Police M K Tandon six times during the period when the latter was present at Gulbarg Society and the mob was growing restive. Though Tandon was accompanied by "striking force" equipped to disperse a riotous mob, he left Gulbarg Society without taking any corrective action and his departure led to the massacre ...". On 14 May 2010, the SIT submitted a report under sealed cover. Prior to this, the SIT had requested additional time to report as it wanted to question VHP International president,
Praveen Togadia, which it did on 11 May 2010. On 15 December 2010,
Zakia Jafri and other victims filed an application with the Supreme Court, requesting it to direct SIT to submit the report before the Ahmedabad court as ordered by the SC, within 30 days. Thereafter on 8 February 2012, SIT submitted its final report to a Gujarat magistrate's court, which after evaluating it would decide whether further investigation was required or not. In its closure report filed in the Zakia Jafri case, the SIT submitted that Jafri was killed because he provoked a "violent mob" that had assembled "to take revenge of Godhra incident from the Muslims". It further submitted that Jafri fired at the mob and "the provoked mob stormed the society and set it on fire." == Sting operation ==