A day after the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit by the SIT to then Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat Muslim genocide, the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) arrested retired state DGP R B Sreekumar, whose role had been called into question by the Court, and human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, who backed the petitioner, Zakia Jafri.
The arrests came hours after Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in an interview to ANI, criticised the role of “a police official” and Setalvad’s NGO, apart from media, in the case against Narendra Modi.
A team of the Ahmedabad Crime Branch picked up Sreekumar from his residence in Gandhinagar on Saturday afternoon while Setalvad was detained from her Mumbai residence.
Sreekumar was taken to the Crime Branch headquarters in Jamalpur, Ahmedabad,
The two were held on charges of criminal conspiracy, forgery and other Sections of the IPC on the basis of an FIR lodged in the DCB by Inspector Darshansinh Barad.
The FIR quotes extensively from the order of the top court. Also named in the nine-page FIR, filed on behalf of the Gujarat state, is former IPS officer and whistleblower Sanjiv Bhatt, who also faced strictures in the Supreme Court order. Bhatt is already in jail in connection with another case.
“The Supreme Court order clearly establishes that Sanjiv Bhatt, R B Sreekumar, Teesta Setalvad and others had conspired to abuse the process of law by fabricating false evidence to make several persons to be convicted for an offence that is punishable with capital punishment, thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 194 of the IPC. Furthermore it has been established in the course of the investigation done by the SIT that Sanjiv Bhatt, R B Sreekumar, Teesta and others had instituted false and malicious criminal proceedings against innocent people with the intention to cause injury, an act punishable under Section 211 of the IPC. Sanjiv Bhatt and R B Sreekumar who at the time of their acts of commission and omission were public servants… and they had framed incorrect records with intent to cause injury to several persons, for which they are culpable under Section 218 of the IPC. Sanjiv Bhatt, R B Sreekumar, Teesta Setalvad and others had conspired and prepared false records and had dishonestly used those records as genuine ones with the intention of causing damage and injury to several persons thereby having committed offence inter alia, punishable under Sections 468 and 471 of the IPC,” read the FIR accessed by Indian Express
 arrested retired state DGP R B Sreekumar, whose role had been called into question by the Court, and human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, who backed the petitioner, Zakia Jafri.){kind=link}