Teesta case: Gujarat police "did not even know" memorial for riot victims got just Rs 4.5 lakh as donation

Gulberg Society

By Satyakam Mehta
Two days ahead of the Supreme Court's bar on the Gujarat police to arrest well-known human rights activist Teesta Setalvad and and her husband Javed Anand ends, eminent advocate Mihir Desai has said that the police charge that Rs 1.5 crore for the memorial for the victims of the 2002 riots were “embezzled” suggests how casually the investigators have looked into details. Desai told this correspondent, “They were not even aware about the extent of donations for the purpose. We informed them with proper documents that Rs 4.5 lakh was collected.”
Talking about the controversy surrounding the proposed memorial, Desai said only Rs 4.5 lakh could be collected for the purpose but the money was not adequate to purchase all the houses and lands in the society to set up a memorial. “The donors were informed, who in return, asked the money to be used for other specific human rights work”, he added.
Desai went on, “The Gulberg Society office-bearers were informed in writing that the collection was not enough and the memorial was not working out. Every single communique relating to this is with the police and in the courts.”
Asked specifically about the memorial, Desai said only Rs 4.5 lakh could be collected for the purpose but the money was not adequate to purchase all the houses and lands in the society to set up a memorial. “The donors were informed, who in return, asked the money to be used for other specific human rights work”, he added.
Summarising what is already with the courts and the Crime Branch police, Desai, who is one Setalvad’s counsels also, and is based in Mumbai, said, “Every single bank account statement, every single credit card statement and as many as 25,000 vouchers are with the police and are attached to more than 1,000 pages of affidavits that we filed in the court.”
Desai insisted, “It is surprising for the police to say and the (Gujarat High) Court to agree that we are not cooperating with the investigation, though the FIR against us and the inquiry thereafter has gone much far ahead than the original memorial case.” He added, despite this “we have submitted every single paper they wanted.”
“Courts in the state have been told that the police got the accounts of the trusts re-audited and could not find anything there”, Desai wondered how could personal expenses from the credit cards of Teesta and others be described as “misuse of donations, while no such usage has ever been debited to the accounts of the two trusts.”
According to him, “Donors like the Ford Foundation and all others don’t give monies just like that. They want an account of every single penny spent. It is surprising that the police have not even approached the donors to verify if they were satisfied with the use of funds. The Home Ministry examines every details.”
“All documents and deeds of the trusts, which have eminent people from various fields on the board, approving reimbursement to Setalvad and Anand to carry out executive functions of the various public welfare activities have been submitted”, he asserted.
The top lawyer's observations come amidst allegations running high against Setalvad, the person who fought some of the most crucial legal battles for the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots. While the riots may be going into the backburner, pitched legal battles between human rights activists and the Gujarat government continue.
Setalvad, along with Anand and other members of NGOs, Citizens for Peace and Justice and Sabrang Trust, with the help of battery of two dozen lawyers, have fought about 20 cases in various courts to bring in life imprisonment orders for as many as 125 convicts, besides many others who got smaller sentences.
Electorally Gujarat's BJP rulers may have gained, but, thanks to Setalvad, they have lost face among respected sections of society, one reason why, many believe, they are moving so fast to “prove” Setalvad and other guilty of embezzlement. They are facing charges that they abused for purely personal gains funds collected in the name of riot victims of Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad, where they were supposed to raise a memorial in homage to those who were killed.
The charge, filed by the Crime Branch police in Ahmedabad, is that Teesta and the public trusts she represents collected donations for the purpose that was never fulfilled. She, through eminent lawyers, has dismissed the charges as “malicious and politically-motivated”. According to her the charges were virtually to hound her team for taking on the then chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The “political motivation” charge spawns from her long-drawn court battle for Zakia Jafri, widow of slain politician Ehsan Jafri, who was among 69 people killed in a massacre at Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002, that is being fiercely fought with her lawyers arguing for over seven years in various courts to establish the involvement of the highest office in the Gujarat Government in provoking targetted killings of a particular community.
The present case against her, in which she has got reprieve from Supreme Court that has prevented her arrest till February 19, is that she through her organisations, Citizens for Peace and Justice and Sabrang Trust, promised the residents of the devastated Gulberg Society to raise a memorial to those who lost their lives, and that they should not sell off their houses or land.

But the memorial never took shape and the donations collected for it were embezzled. The charge that is being vigorously flagged in the courts is that Teesta and her husband Javed Anand used loads of this money through credit cards for personal use like foreign sojourns, buying branded clothes as well as expensive liquor.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

UP tribal woman human rights defender Sokalo released on bail

By A Representative After almost five months in jail, Adivasi human rights defender and forest worker Sokalo Gond has been finally released on bail.Despite being granted bail on October 4, technical and procedural issues kept Sokalo behind bars until November 1. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), which are backing Sokalo, called it a "major victory." Sokalo's release follows the earlier releases of Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond in September. "All three forest workers and human rights defenders were illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006)", said a CJP statement.

Jayanthi Natarajan "never stood by tribals' rights" in MNC Vedanta's move to mine Niyamigiri Hills in Odisha

By A Representative The Odisha Chapter of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), which played a vital role in the struggle for the enactment of historic Forest Rights Act, 2006 has blamed former Union environment minister Jaynaynthi Natarjan for failing to play any vital role to defend the tribals' rights in the forest areas during her tenure under the former UPA government. Countering her recent statement that she rejected environmental clearance to Vendanta, the top UK-based NMC, despite tremendous pressure from her colleagues in Cabinet and huge criticism from industry, and the claim that her decision was “upheld by the Supreme Court”, the CSD said this is simply not true, and actually she "disrespected" FRA.

Stands 'exposed': Cavalier attitude towards rushed construction of Char Dham project

By Bharat Dogra* The nation heaved a big sigh of relief when the 41 workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel (Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand) were finally rescued on November 28 after a 17-day rescue effort. All those involved in the rescue effort deserve a big thanks of the entire country. The government deserves appreciation for providing all-round support.

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah* A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards .

Search This Blog