Nanavati panel gets 22nd extension

AHMEDABAD: The Justice G T Nanavati commission that has been investigating the 2002 riots has got its 22nd extension but this one is for only two months. On Monday, the state government extended its term till August 30. The commission’s secretary said the probe panel had requested the extension so that it could prepare and submit its report on the post-Godhra riots.
As the Gujarat high court has directed the commission to supply all documents to suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to enable him to file an affidavit, the probe panel’s work might need some more time to complete.
The Nanavati commission has been inquiring into the 2002 riots cases for over 12 years now. The commission was appointed by the state government on March 3, 2002, under the Commissions of Inquiry Act and was headed by Justice K G Shah. Later, the government had widened the commission’s scope of inquiry to include post-Godhra communal riots and had appointed retired Supreme Court judge G T Nanavati as its chairman.
After Justice Shah’s demise, the government appointed Justice (retired) Akshay Mehta as a member of the commission. In 2009, the commission submitted its report on the fire that had broken out in the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express.
Meanwhile, Justice Sugnya Bhatt enquiry commission, set up to probe the alleged snooping on a young woman by the Gujarat ATS, got its second extension of three months. The state government had set up the enquiry commission on November 26 last year after it came under attack over the alleged snooping incident. Justice Bhatt was made chairman of the commission and retired bureaucrat K C Kapoor its member. Earlier, on November 15, two news portals, Cobrapost.com and Gulail.com, had uploaded audio tapes claiming that former Gujarat minister of state for home, Amit Shah, had ordered illegal surveillance of a woman at the behest of one ‘Saheb’. The tapes were purportedly a record of conversations that had taken place between Shah and IPS officer G L Singhal during the snooping incident.