Modi slammed for ’partisan’ handling of Gujarat riots

Mtoday news

Ahmedabad, Feb 4:  The Gujarat riots are casting a longer and darker shadow now over the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat.

A team appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the Gujarat riots of 2002 gives the Chief Minister a near-fail grade for his "partisan" handling of the riots, according to Tehelka magazine and wire service, AFP, both of who have seen copies of the report.

 

 

However, the Special Investigating Team (SIT) allegedly says it has not unearthed facts that necessitate criminal prosecution.

The report will be submitted in the Supreme Court on March 3, nearly three years after the SIT was appointed.


In 2002 in the communal riots across Gujarat, one of the worst since the partition of India, 1200 people were killed, most of them Muslims, largely by Hindu mobs. The trigger for the violence was the Godhra train carnage in February that year - the Sabarmati Express, packed with Hindu pilgrims, was set on fire. Fifty nine people were killed. Hindu groups said Muslims were to blame. Over the next three days, Muslim neighbourhoods were targeted with unrelenting ferocity.

The SIT delivers a chilling assessment of Mr Modi’s role. "His implied justification of the killings of innocent members of the minority community, read together with an absence of a strong condemnation of the violence... suggest a partisan stance at a critical juncture," the panel said.

The BJP in Gujarat has said it will not react to news of the report since the matter is sub-judice. But the contents are likely to force urgent internal discussions. "The Chief Minister had tried to water down the seriousness of the situation," the SIT’s report states, "in spite of the fact that ghastly and violent attacks had taken place on Muslims... the reaction of the government was not the type that would have been expected by anyone."

However, the report says there is nothing to back the allegation leveled by human rights activists that a day after the Godhra riots, the chief minister instructed officials at a meeting to let Hindus vent their anger.

The report also states that while two ministers from Mr Modi’s government were placed in police control rooms in Ahmedabad, there is no evidence that they were instructed by Mr Modi  to prevent the police from reaching riot-affected areas. The SIT says that under scrutiny, the cellphone records of the ministers suggest that they were in touch with those orchestrating the riots.