‘No need to expunge anti-Teesta remarks’

NEW DELHI: As many as 190 signatories comprising 13 retired judges, 90 retired bureaucrats and 87 retired armed forces officers on Tuesday wrote an open letter to the Supreme Court urging that it need not expunge any of its remarks in the ‘Zakia Ahsan Jafri v. the State of Gujarat’ case and not be intimidated by the tactics of “institutional disruptors”.
Rather, the SC would allow the law to take its own course and uphold the majesty and dignity of the court by ensuring that the public’s confidence in the judicial system stays intact, the signatories said. They said since the lodging of an FIR and the arrest of Teesta Setalvad, a “politically motivated section of civil society” has made attempts to cast aspersions on the integrity of the judiciary at large and in this case, related to Setalvad, this section has attempted to pressure the judiciary to expunge remarks unfavourable to Setalvad and the two guilty IPS officers who fabricated evidence.
Former high court judges R S Rathore, S N Dhingra and M C Garg, former IPS officers Sanjeev Tripathi, Sudhir Kumar, B S Bassi and Karnal Singh, former IAS officers G Prasanna Kumar and Prema Chandra, and Lt Gen (retired) V K Chaturvedi are among the signatories to the statement titled “Interference in ju- diciary not acceptable”.
They reacted to several human rights groups and civil society members’ criticism of the court’s observations against Teesta Setalvad and others.
Referring to the June 24 verdict of the SC giving a clean chit to the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots case and its scathing remarks against the conduct of Setalvad, Sanjiv Bhatt and R B Sreekumar, the signatories maintained that the registration of an FIR against the three was strictly in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure and the accused can always take resort to the provisions of the Code and the Constitution.