The ghosts of the 2002 Gujarat riots continue to haunt chief minister Narendra Modi. The weekly magazine Tehelka claims to have dug up a carefully buried indictment of Modi by the special investigation team (SIT) probing the riots.

According to the magazine, the SIT has held the chief minister responsible for destroying crucial records, making inflammatory speeches, appointing Sangh members as prosecutors for the riots cases, and postioning ministers in the police control room during riots in its 600-page report to the supreme court. The magazine also quotes the SIT report as stating that the Gujarat police probe of the Naroda Patia and Gulberg Society massacre cases as being shoddy at best.

The Tehelka report is damning of the investigation team as well, questioning its reluctance to probe most of its findings further.

The SIT which submitted its report to the supreme court in May 2010 was formed in 2008 on the basis of a petition by Zakia Jafri, the widow of Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri who was killed in the 2002 communal riots. Zakia had named Modi as the principal accused in her petition.

Tehelka also claims that probe findings also questioned Modi's behavious in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning which is believed to have triggered the riots.

The SIT has also indicted the minister of state for home Gordhan Zafadia and senior cops M K Tandon and P B Gondia for complicity in the riots. But it claimed that the findings cannot be investigated further under the law.