Zakia Jafri, who waged a relentless legal battle against Narendra Modi and his then Gujarat government after her husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was burnt alive with 68 others during the 2002 riots, died on Saturday, family sources said. She was 86.

“My mother was visiting my sister’s house in Ahmedabad. She completed her daily morning routine and was normally chatting with her family members when she complained of feeling uneasy. The doctor who was called in declared her dead at around 11.30am,” her son Tanveer Jafri said, according to PTI.

Rights activist Teesta Setalvad — Zakia’s co-petitioner in challenging the “clean chit” given to Modi by an apex court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) that probed the riots — called Zakia “a compassionate leader of the human rights community”.

“Her visionary presence will be missed by d nation family friends & world!” Setalvad said in a condolence message on X.

Zakia Jafri and her family members, victims of the Gulbarg Society massacre, which occurred during the 2002 Gujarat riots, visit the society on the 21st anniversary of the tragedy, in Ahmedabad, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023. PTI

Zakia had in a 2006 complaint alleged “a larger conspiracy” behind the riots by people in high places, claiming bureaucratic inaction and police complicity had allowed massacres such as the killing of 69 people, including her husband, at Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society on February 28, 2002.

After Gujarat High Court denied her plea, she got the Supreme Court in 2008 to direct the SIT, formed to look into the riot cases, to also consider her allegations against then chief minister Modi and some of his ministers and police officers.

One of her charges was that the Gujarat government had deliberately delayed army deployment to contain the violence.

The SIT — headed by former CBI director R.K. Raghavan — filed a closure report in February 2012 exonerating Modi and 63 others, saying there was “no prosecutable evidence” against them. Zakia fought all the way up to the apex court, continuing a decade-long fight.

On June 24, 2022, the apex court dismissed her and Setalvad’s public interest pleas, finding them devoid of merit. The bench was headed by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, who is now the country’s Lok Pal. The other judges on the bench were Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice C.T. Ravi Kumar.

While dismissing the pleas by Zakia and Setalvad, the bench asked the authorities to proceed against certain former police officers and Setalvad for “keeping the pot boiling” by making allegations “false to their own knowledge” to implicate Modi in the riots. It did not pass any strictures against Zakia.

Senior advocate Kamini Jaiswal described Zakia’s death as “a very, very sad thing”.

“It is very unfortunate that she died with a blot on her face that she was maliciously prosecuting the government,” Jaiswal told The Telegraph.

“Everybody knows that she was not responsible for the number of years the litigations (remained) pending. She is the victim of the crime and she had to bear this humiliation of being treated as a persecutor. Hats off to her courage and tenacity for having fought to get justice for her late husband.”

Another rights lawyer, Aparna Bhat, who had represented the Jafri family, said: “Zakia Jafri lived through the experience of her husband’s killing by a brutal mob just because he belonged to a certain community. She lost everything but didn’t lose her spirit, courage and perseverance.”

She added: “I’m proud to have been her lawyer and feel privileged to have known her.”

Additional reporting by PTI