Asaram gurukul case: Parents, NGOs opt not to submit affidavits before Trivedi Commission

The Justice Trivedi Commission was appointed by the Gujarat Government on July 21 to inquire into the facts and circumstances leading to the deaths of the two boys and the police investigations into the case.

The commission was appointed following a massive public agitation against the investigations and the Ashram run gurukul at Motera from where the two boys went missing under mysterious circumstances on July 3. Praful and Shantilal Vaghela, the father of the two boys, had then sat on an indefinite hunger strike.

An official associated with the commission said: “It is very shocking and surprising that the people who were quite vocal during the massive public agitation to get justice for the two deceased boys, have not come forward when a judicial inquiry has been set up for the same. Even the parents of the two children have not provided the commission any information in the case.”

Elsewhere, Ashok Jain, an office bearer of the Akhil Bhartiya Mahajan Parivar, an NGO, purportedly said: “The mysterious act of the two Vaghela brothers to break their fasts before the chief minister and discontinue the agitation is very objectionable. Therefore, we have detached ourselves from them. We are not concerned with the issue anymore, and do not want to submit anything before the commission.”

Prakash Kapadiya, the president of Jagega Gujarat Sangharsh Samiti, an NGO, which actively participated in the agitation, said he is not an eye-witness to either the missing act of the two boys or the subsequent recovery of their bodies from the Sabarmati riverbed. “Therefore, we cannot submit anything before the commission,” he said.

Sources said the commission has received more than 500 affidavits ever since it was set up. The initial time frame for the commission ended on October 20, though it has been given a six-month extension till April 20, 2009.

Sources also said that now the commission is planning to issue summons to the Vaghelas and the organisations associated with the agitation to appear before it.