Godhra: SPP places POTA review panel’s view in court

The Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) conducting the Godhra case on Tuesday placed the opinion of the Central POTA Review Committee in the case before the designated court here and sought further two week’s time to submit his opinion on the matter.

Citing that the voluminous chargesheets and record running into thousands of pages had to be read ‘‘before he requested the court to drop POTA charges against the accused in the case.’’ Last week, the Central POTA Review Committee had submitted to the State Government its opinion in the case, suggesting dropping of POTA charges against all the 131 accused in the case. The committee had stated that prima-facie no case under POTA was made out against the accused.

‘‘And the Godhra train carnage was not a case of waging war against the state but a fallout of the scuffle between vendors and passengers of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express,’’ the review committee has observed in its report.

But the SPP, H M Dhruv, argued before the court that the prosecutor was in no way under a compulsion to agree with the findings of the court. Dhruv also told the court that as per the Gujarat High Court judgement, he was to to first place the review committee’s report in the court and also move an appropriate application under Section 321 of the CrPc for withdrawal of prosecution under POTA against the accused.