NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Wednesday took full control of the SIT probe against MP minister Vijay Shah’s ‘crass comments’ aimed at Col Sofiya Qureshi, who briefed media on first two days of ‘Operation Sindoor’, and asked Jabalpur HC to close its suo motu proceedings resulting in lodging of FIR against him.On appeal against HC’s decision to direct registration of FIR, a bench headed by Justice Surya Kant had on May 19 had ordered the setting up of a SIT comprising three IPS officers to investigate his comments while slamming him for putting up a facade of an apology following uproar against his remarks.On Wednesday solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for MP government, informed the court that the SIT has been duly constituted and the investigations are underway. The SIT in its status report informed SC that it had visited the place where Shah made the comments, transcribed his objectionable speech and seized his mobile phone.The SIT informed the court that it has also recorded the statement of seven witnesses and sought time to complete the probe. A bench of Justices Kant and Dipankar Datta allowed the SIT to file its probe status report in July second week.In its status report, the SIT said, “The video of the speech, seized by the Investigating Officer of Manpur police station, was sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory, Bhopal for forensic examination but the same was returned due to lack of technical infrastructure for the necessary examination.”“The phone seized from Lokesh Rathore, Local News Correspondent has been sent to the CFSL, Bhopal for forensic analysis. It also contains original video recording of the event held at village Raikunda, Manpur on May 12,” it said.
