The Supreme Court put an end to the controversy surrounding the killing of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya in 2003 by declaring that he was killed as part of an international terror plot by 12 persons following the 2002 Gujarat riots. By doing so, the Court dismissed the demand for a fresh probe made in a PIL filed by NGO Centre for PIL with a cost of Rs 50,000 to be deposited with the lawyers' welfare fund of the Supreme Court.
Though the trial court did not doubt the claim of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that Pandya was killed as part of a terror plot hatched in Gujarat and Hyderabad with help from non-state actors in Pakistan, the case had an interesting twist in August 2011 when the Gujarat High Court disbelieved the prosecution story and acquitted nine out of the 12 convicted persons for the murder of Pandya.
This gave room for the family of the deceased to claim that Pandya's killing was a political one as he was the most vocal critic of then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Pandya's father approached the Gujarat High Court for a fresh probe in 2008 but the same was dismissed and upheld subsequently by the Supreme Court. Later, Pandya's wife filed a petition in the HC disbelieving the account of CBI. That too was dismissed.
It was then that Centre for PIL approached the Supreme Court in January 2019 at a time when the appeals filed by CBI were being heard in apex court. The PIL argued by lawyer Prashant Bhushan and his father Shanti Bhushan produced new evidences in the form of a book by a journalist and statement of persons claiming knowledge of the plot to kill Pandya.
Dismissing the evidence as a "bunch of lies" the bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Vineet Saran said, "the matter should have rested finally as the petition filed by the family members also stands dismissed by this Court. Raking up of the matter, again and again, is not permissible and was wholly unwarranted in the facts and circumstances of the case. The same amounts to political vendetta."
The bench had a firm view that the petition was a disguised appeal set up by the accused and filed with an "oblique motive". The Court even accused Bhushan of misconduct as he being the Executive Committee member of Centre for PIL, argued the matter as its lawyer.
The Court examined the evidence led by the prosecution threadbare in its 234-page judgment and felt that the HC by acquitting the nine accused – Mohd Asgar Ali, Kalim Ahmed, Anas Machiswala, Mohd Yunus Sareshwala, Rehan Puthawala, Mohd Riyaz, Mohd Parvez Shaikh, Parvez Khan Pathan, and Mohd Faruq – the bench said, committed "gross perversity".
The call records of the accused showing their presence at the scene of crime on March 25 and 26, 2003 and the recovery of the stolen motorcycles used in the crime were clinching evidence to nail their guilt.