Families of Godhra accused celebrate as police officer dropped from SIT

Vadodara/Ahmedabad, April 28 : The family members of those arrested under POTA for the Godhra incident in 2002, distributed sweets following news of the shunting out of deputy superintendent of police (DySP) Noel Parmar from the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Monday.

While the SIT stated that Parmar and another DySP were dropped to make way for fresh investigation officers, the families rejoiced and distributed sweets in Godhra and said that there was now a better chance of getting justice.

Saeed Umarji, son of Maulvi Umarji, who is presently in jail under POTA, had written several applications and memorandums to the SIT chairperson, former CBI director R K Raghavan, opposing Parmar’s inclusion. Saeed had also tried to meet the SIT which came visiting Godhra recently. “We believe that DySP Parmar himself should be an accused as he arrested several innocent people in the aftermath of the 2002 riots. We welcome the SIT’s decision to drop him,” Umarji said. He added that the SIT now had better chances of completing a neutral investigation.

Umarji and several other families in Godhra distributed sweets in the city celebrating Parmar’s exclusion from the SIT. Requesting anonymity, yet another relative of a man arrested under POTA, from Godhra said: “We did not even want to meet the SIT when they came to Godhra two days ago because of Parmar. Now we might even send our own testimonies to the SIT.” He added that those arrested, who were innocent now had a far better chance of being released from jail.

Welcoming the move by the SIT, Dr Mukul Sinha of Jansangharsh Manch said that SIT will gain a lot of credibility with this. “The investigations carried out by Parmer was prima facie defective, which has been acknowledged by the Supreme Court before and with him in the team, the credibility of SIT would have taken a serious beating,” Sinha said.

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