Zakia Jafri, wife of former Congress MP killed in 2002 Gujarat riots, dies at 86

Zakia Jafri, the wife of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the 2002 Gujarat riots, died in Ahmedabad on Saturday, The Indian Express reported. She was 86.

“My mother was visiting my sister’s house in Ahmedabad,” PTI quoted Zakia Jafri’s son Tanveer Jafri as saying. “She completed her daily morning routine and was chatting normally with her family members when she complained of feeling uneasy.”

A doctor was called in, he said, adding that she was declared dead at around 11.30 am.

More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in the communal riots that erupted in Gujarat in February and March of 2002 after a coach of Sabarmati Express carrying Hindu pilgrims from Ayodhya was burnt in Godhra. Fifty-nine persons died in the incident on February 27, 2002.

Ehsan Jafri was among the 69 persons killed when a mob went on a rampage at the Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002.

In 2006, Zakia Jafri submitted a complaint stating that the state police had not registered a complaint against Narendra Modi, the Gujarat chief minister at the time, among others in connection with the riots.

A petition by Zakia Jafri had led the Supreme Court in 2008 to order a re-investigation of nine cases relating to the riots by the Special Investigation…

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