Arguing for arraignment of former IPS officer Rahul Sharma in the 2002 Naroda Gam riots case, defence lawyer Chetan Shah today said call records of top officials in the case went missing as part of a conspiracy against the accused.
Shah told special SIT judge M K Dave that the CD went missing because it contained call details of some of the top officials in the case and could have served as vital evidence in support of those accused in the case.
He said the CD was destroyed as part of a conspiracy hatched against the accused by the then UPA government, adding that the duplicate CD did not have call details of top officials.
The matter will be heard further on April 11.
Shah was earlier asked by the court to prove how Sharma destroyed the CD, in order for the latter to be made an accused for destruction of evidence, after Shah moved an application alleging that Sharma had misplaced the original CD.
He had told the court that the CD containing important call details of state functionaries during the riots was misplaced and instead a duplicate CD was submitted on October 30, 2004 before the Nanavati Commission probing the riots.
Replying to the notice issued by the court on Shah's plea, Sharma had earlier said that it was "erroneous", an attempt to "delay the trials" and "deserves to be dismissed."
He also said that the existence of the CD would not have been known had he not told the Commission about it in 2004.
Sharma, a 1992-batch IPS officer, had voluntarily retired from service in 2015.
As the then deputy commissioner of police in the state control room in 2002, he had assisted police, for a brief period, in the investigation of the riots and had made a CD of call records of some important officers and leaders.
Along with Sharma, Shah had also sought arraignment of then investigation officer P L Mal.
The CD, containing the call details of ministers, bureaucrats and police officers during the 2002 riots, was seen as an important piece of evidence, detailing the location of the accused in various post-Godhra riots cases, including that of Naroda Gam.
Eleven persons from the minority community were killed in the Naroda Gam locality of Ahmedabad by a mob on February 28, 2002, a day after the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express was charred, leaving 59 people dead.
In 2009, the SIT had filed a charge-sheet in the case and arraigned 83 people as accused, including then Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani of the BJP.
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