Parmar’s investigation had led to the invoking of POTA against the Sabarmati Express carnage accused, which was later revoked by the Gujarat High Court.

After giving a record four consecutive extensions to the investigating officer in the train carnage case of February 27, 2002, the Modi government is learnt to be willing to give Parmar another extension for a period of six months.

Sources in the Gujarat Home department told Newsline that a request for clearing fifth extension for Parmar has been sent to the Election Commission office in Gandhinagar. Chief Election Officer Anita Karwal said, “We have forwarded the request to the Election Commission office in New Delhi.”

According to SP Western Railways N D Solanki, Parmar’s fourth extension expired on March 31 this year. “He (Parmar) is presently on leave and there is no final word from the state government yet,” Solanki said.

Born on August 13, 1946, Parmar retired at 58 on August 13, 2004. He had been investigating the Godhra carnage case since May 2002, when he was the DSP Western Railways. Parmar had filed his first of the total 17 supplementary chargesheets in the case on December 1, 2002.

The probe, POTA and Parmar

It was on February 5, 2003, almost a year after the tragic incident, that Noel Parmar re-invoked POTA in the case. The Gujarat Police’s theory that the carnage was a pre-planned terror conspiracy has its base in the statement of one of the accused, a platform tea vendor, Jabir Binyamin Behra. DySP K C Bawa, who was the investigating officer before Parmar, had earlier revoked the POTA from the case for want of evidence. Parmar recorded Behra’s statements on February 5, 2003. It was on the basis of this statement that a resident of Godhra, Hussain Ibrahim Umarjee aka Maulana Umarjee, one of the alleged masterminds of the train carnage, was arrested and booked under POTA. The Gujarat High Court, however, had recently ruled that the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) was not applicable on those arrested in connection with the torching of the S6 coach of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station.

Experts say that consequent to this ruling, Parmar, who had slapped POTA charges on 134 accused, can himself be prosecuted under the provisions of the Act. “Section 58 of the Act calls for punishing, with imprisonment upto two years, any police officer or government authority found to have misused the POTA and booked people under the act maliciously,” said Mukul Sinha, advocate for rights group Jan Sangharsh Manch.