Court sends query to investigating officer on phone data CDs

AHMEDABAD: The special SIT court hearing the Naroda Gam massacre case has sought explanation from the investigating officer (IO) P L Mall over his remark claiming that the phone data CDs submitted as evidence in the court were original CDs'. The CDs in question were prepared by former IPS officer Rahul Sharma and they contain records of phone calls made in the city during the 2002 riots.
Six years after IPS officer Mall placed the CDs before the court, special judge PB Desai has asked him to clarify whether the CDs are original' or not, as Sharma himself had stated that the CDs he had provided to the SIT were prepared from data he had copied from CDs submitted to the crime branch.
This question whether the CDs were original' has become a "bone of contention" after the accused persons, who are being tried for killing 11 persons on February 28, 2002, accused the IO of shielding Sharma. They have also accused Sharma of destruction of evidence' by misplacing the original CDs.
Earlier, in his testimony before the court, Sharma had revealed that the original CDs had gone missing after he sent them by a police rider for delivery to then city crime branch head, P P Pandey who, however, never took the evidence on record.
The accused in the Naroda Gam case have demanded that Sharma be put on trial for destruction of evidence and Mall too be prosecuted for shielding Sharma.
The details of these CDs, which were misplaced in 2002, came to be highlighted after Sharma submitted copies of the CDs before the Nanavati-Shah commission during his deposition in 2004. Later, Sharma had also placed a copy of these CDs before Justice U C Banerjee Committee set up by the then UPA government to probe the cause of the fire in S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express near Godhra station in which 59 kar sevaks lost their lives.
The trial in the Naroda Gam case has been going for nearly six years after the Gujarat high court set up the special SIT court in 2009. Sixty-one persons are being tried in this case, including former minister and convict in the Naroda Patia massacre case Maya Kodnani, and a VHP functionary Jaideep Patel.