Controversial ex-judge joins Gujarat riots probe

Justice Akshay Mehta was on Tuesday appointed as a second member of the Justice Nanavati commission, which is probing the Godhra train carnage and the riots in Gujarat after it. And there lies a controversy. Civil society groups allege that Mehta, when he was a judge in the Gujarat High Court, helped some of the accused in the 2002 riots in getting bail easily. An accused in one of the most important riot cases confessed to a magazine’s sting operation last year that Mehta had helped in “freeing” him.