The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), on Thursday, submitted before the Gujarat High Court that the state police was biased in its investigation of the Naroda Patia and Naroda Gam mass murder cases of 2002. Special Public Prosecutor J M Panchal was pleading on behalf of the SIT, seeking cancellation of the anticipatory bail of Minister of State for Higher Education Maya Kodnani, and VHP leader Jaydeep Patel.

Further hearing in the matter has been adjourned till Friday.

He told Justice D H Waghela that the state police team had not property recorded the statements of the victims and the witnesses, which led to the disappearance of the names of Kodnani and Patel from the investigation reports.

He said the police had filed four different chargesheets in the Naroda Patia case on June 4, 2002; August 23, 2002; November 10, 2004; and February 15, 2008; but Kodnani’s name did not appear in any one of them. The police also filed chargesheets in the Naroda Gam case in August 2002, February 2004, September 2004 and November 2004, but the names of neither Kodnani nor Patel appeared in the chargesheets.

The two massacres resulted in the killing of 109 members of the minority community and injuries to four dozen others.

Panchal said the SIT investigations had, however, found the involvement of Kodnani and Patel in the two cases. Their names surfaced during the recording of statements of the witnesses. But the SIT could not include their names in the chargesheets in the Naroda Patia case filed on December 11, 2008, and two other separate chargesheets in the Naroda Gam case, filed in August and December 2008, as the two could not be arrested and interrogated in the matter.

The interrogation of the accused, Panchal said, was a must to file chargesheet against them.

As such, the SIT was trying to arrest them, he said.

Panchal told the court that besides instigating the mob to attack minority community members, Kodnani had also provided sharp-edged weapons like dharias and swords to the mob.

In response to a question by Justice Waghela that several others in the same case had been granted bail, Panchal contended that instigation by a leader amounted to a serious offence, and hence bail granted to the two leaders was unjustified.

Kodnani and Patel were granted anticipatory bail by the Ahmedabad Sessions Court on February 5, after the SIT declared them as absconders on February 2.

He further said that the accused were influential and there were chances that they could tamper with the evidence. The SIT wanted custodial investigation of the accused and hence the anticipatory bail of the two should be cancelled, he said.