Zakia Jafri, the wife of slain former Congress Rajya Sabha MP Ehsan Jafri, has expressed surprise that the police have failed to apprehend and nab the culprits involved in the 2002 riots even after seven years. All this, while it has managed to solve the July 26 serial bomb blasts case of Ahmedabad and nab all the accused from different parts of the country, she said. Jafri was killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre.

She is, nevertheless, optimistic of getting full justice now that the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) is about to complete its probe, and is doing its best to arrest and interrogate state Minister for Higher Education Maya Kodnani and former VHP leader Jaydeep Patel, involved in the Naroda Gam and Naroda Patia cases, and the then Police Inspector K G Erda, in the Gulbarg Society case.

“I have full faith on the Supreme Court and the SIT and Inshallah, we will get justice,” she told this reporter at Gulbarg Society where she had come from Surat to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the mayhem, on Thursday.

About her petition in the Supreme Court against Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the then Home Minister Gordhan Zadafia among the 68 accused mentioned by her, she said the law is catching up with the accused. Her petition is scheduled for hearing in the Supreme Court on March 6.

“I am sure that even Modi, Zadafia and the then Police Commissioner P C Pande can’t escape the long arms of the law and will soon find themselves behind the bars,” she said.

Another victim, Arshad Khan, an IT engineer working with a multinational company in Bangalore, said he is now hopeful of getting justice as the apex court has intervened in the matter.