Nanavati-Mehta Commission

rdf:langString Nanavati-Mehta Commission

rdf:langString The Nanavati-Mehta Commission is the commission of inquiry appointed by the government of Gujarat to probe the Godhra train burning incident of 27 February 2002. Its mandate was later enlarged to include the investigation of the 2002 Gujarat riots. It was appointed on 6 March 2002, with K. G. Shah, a retired Gujarat High Court judge, as its only member. It was later re-constituted to include G. T. Nanavati, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India, after protests from human rights organizations over Shah's closeness to then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Akshay H. Mehta, retired judge of the Gujarat High Court, replaced Shah when the latter died before the submission of the commission's interim report. Mehta was the same judge who had granted bail to Babu Bajrangi, the main accused of the Naroda Patiya massacre. In September 2008 the Commission submitted the part of its report covering the Godhra train burning incident (Part I) in which it had concluded that burning of the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express near Godhra railway station was a "planned conspiracy". The part dealing with subsequent violence was submitted on 18 November 2014. Its term ended on 31 October 2014, having received 24 extensions from the state government.