https://islamicterrorism.wordpress.com/2007/11/08/islamic-terrorism-godhra-and-tehelka-sting-gujarat-ka-sach/
GUJARAT KA SACH
by
B. P. SINGHAL, IPS. (Retd.), Ex-MP Rajya Sabha.
They-THE SECULARISTS – are at it once again.
“It was a well planned ‘GENOCIDE’”, “it was ‘POGROM’”, “it was state sponsored ‘TERRORISM’”, is what they had said in screaming headlines day after day after day in 2002, in the Delhi based “SECULAR” English dailies and the “SECULAR” electronic media. So complete was the Goebblesian propaganda and so effective was the concealment of truth, that even the Supreme Court lost its judicial balance and without verifying what steps the Government of Gujarat had taken, it went on to write on page 72 of its judgement in the Best Bakery Case that, “The modern day NEROS were looking elsewhere when Best Bakery and innocent children and helpless women were burning ………..”.
It was media power at its worst that caused this unwarranted outburst from the Hon’ble Supreme Court. All the Gujarat language dailies were giving truthful accounts which were at complete variance with the Delhi based Media.
“The Hindu”, the leading-most South India daily reported on 1st March 2002 : “The Chief Minister Modi frantically asked for the Army units to be called in.” On 2nd March 2002 ‘The Hindu’ reported : “Unlike February 28 when one community was entirely at the receiving end, the minority backlash on 1st March has further worsened the situation ………. and the Army staged a flag march in Ahemedabad on 1 st March 2002 at 9.00 A.M.”
It was therefore truly shocking that on 25.8.2007, “Aaj Tak” harped on the same old refrain that “Modi did not call the army until three days had passed”. Even more outrageous was their insistance on this point. When “Aaj Tak” contacted me on phone to get my response, I told the anchor that the GODHRA carnage took place on February 27th 2002, that the Hindu backlash commenced on February 28th and the Army was doing flag march on the forenoon of March 1st ………… He cut me short by saying that “this is exactly what we had said, no action was taken by Modi on 29 th, 30th and 31st thus giving three clear days to the murderers ……..” I had to cut him short by reminding him that the date 28 th was 28th of February 2002 and there was no 29th, 30th or 31st in that month. The phono was of course disconnected. However, it has to be said to the credit of “Aaj Tak” and “Headlines Today” that they called me for a full length studio debate from 9.15 P.M. 11.45 P.M. next day. But the details of that debate shall have to wait. For the present, however, it is imperative that certain facts are stated to prevent perpetuation of the LIES propagated in 2002.
“It was a well planned ‘GENOCIDE’”, “it was ‘POGROM’”, “it was state sponsored ‘TERRORISM’”, is what they had said in screaming headlines day after day after day in 2002, in the Delhi based “SECULAR” English dailies and the “SECULAR” electronic media. So complete was the Goebblesian propaganda and so effective was the concealment of truth, that even the Supreme Court lost its judicial balance and without verifying what steps the Government of Gujarat had taken, it went on to write on page 72 of its judgement in the Best Bakery Case that, “The modern day NEROS were looking elsewhere when Best Bakery and innocent children and helpless women were burning ………..”.
It was media power at its worst that caused this unwarranted outburst from the Hon’ble Supreme Court. All the Gujarat language dailies were giving truthful accounts which were at complete variance with the Delhi based Media.
“The Hindu”, the leading-most South India daily reported on 1st March 2002 : “The Chief Minister Modi frantically asked for the Army units to be called in.” On 2nd March 2002 ‘The Hindu’ reported : “Unlike February 28 when one community was entirely at the receiving end, the minority backlash on 1st March has further worsened the situation ………. and the Army staged a flag march in Ahemedabad on 1 st March 2002 at 9.00 A.M.”
It was therefore truly shocking that on 25.8.2007, “Aaj Tak” harped on the same old refrain that “Modi did not call the army until three days had passed”. Even more outrageous was their insistance on this point. When “Aaj Tak” contacted me on phone to get my response, I told the anchor that the GODHRA carnage took place on February 27th 2002, that the Hindu backlash commenced on February 28th and the Army was doing flag march on the forenoon of March 1st ………… He cut me short by saying that “this is exactly what we had said, no action was taken by Modi on 29 th, 30th and 31st thus giving three clear days to the murderers ……..” I had to cut him short by reminding him that the date 28 th was 28th of February 2002 and there was no 29th, 30th or 31st in that month. The phono was of course disconnected. However, it has to be said to the credit of “Aaj Tak” and “Headlines Today” that they called me for a full length studio debate from 9.15 P.M. 11.45 P.M. next day. But the details of that debate shall have to wait. For the present, however, it is imperative that certain facts are stated to prevent perpetuation of the LIES propagated in 2002.
Fact 1: That SHOOT AT SIGHT ORDERS had been given by the Government on 28th itself.
Being an Ex-DGP and also a Member of Parliament at that time, I was personally in touch with the office of DGP Gujarat and the Commissioner of Police Ahemedabad. I was keen to tell them, (a) To call in the Army atonce and (b) To issue “SHOOT AT SIGHT” orders to all officers of the rank of Sub-Inspectors and above. It was very comforting to learn that the Government of Gujarat had already taken both those steps by 2.30 P.M. on 28 th February itself. In fact the State Government had also requested for Armed Police reinforcements from neighbouring states, besides calling for the Army.
What did the then president Mr K R Narayanan have to say about the deployment of the army?
There was governmental and administrative support for the communal riots in Gujarat. I gave several letters to Prime Minister Vajpayee in this regard on this issue. I met him personally and talked to him directly. But Vajpayee did not do anything effective.I requested him to send the army to Gujarat and suppress the riots. The Centre had the Constitutional responsibility and powers to send the military if the state governments asked. The military was sent, but they were not given powers to shoot. If the military was given powers to shoot at the perpetrators of violence, recurrence of tragedies in Gujarat could have been avoided.However, both the state and central government did not do so. Had the military been given powers to shoot, the carnage in Gujarat could have been avoided to a great extent. I feel there was a conspiracy involving the state and central governments behind the Gujarat riots.
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Soldiers 'held back
to allow Hindus revenge'
By Rahul Bedi in
Ahmedabad
12:01AM GMT 04 Mar
2002
TROOPS and police appeared to have most of
Gujarat state under control yesterday after almost 500 people had died in
India's worst Hindu-Muslim bloodshed in a decade.
Intelligence officials admitted, however,
that there had been a deliberate delay by federal and state governments in
deploying the army to give Hindu militants a free hand after a Muslim mob killed 58 Hindus on
a train.
The air force had 13 transport aircraft fuelled and ready at
Jodhpur in neighbouring Rajasthan state to ferry troops to Ahmedabad, early
on Thursday evening, when the rioting was at its height.
"But for an inexplicable reason, even
though it was apparent that the state police were proving incapable, 1,000
troops were flown out only the next morning," said a senior military
officer.
On arriving in Ahmedabad, scene of the worst violence, the
soldiers were not provided with transport, information on communally
sensitive areas or guides.
"When the army was eventually deployed
on Friday evening it was not taken to the trouble spots, but merely asked to
display itself in areas from which the Muslims had already fled," a
security officer said.
"It was a calculated decision by the
state's Hindu nationalist government."
Intelligence officials admitted that a
"systems failure", prompted by politicians, allowed the rioting to
continue. They said some police connived and, at times, even helped Hindu
mobs.
Narinder Modi, Gujarat's chief minister,
said yesterday: "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."
His officials conceded that this was a "cynical justification" of
four days of rioting. Mr Modi, who belongs to the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata party that heads the federal coalition, added that Gujarat's
50 million people had shown "remarkable restraint under grave
provocation", implying that the violence could have been worse.
A curfew was in place last night in
sensitive parts of Ahmedabad, but an air of normality was returning. However,
Muslim survivors of grisly massacres and the unchecked 30-hour orgy of
violence and arson, were bemused.
They said the police simply stood by, or in
some cases even encouraged the rioters as they went on the rampage, burning
entire families to death in their homes. "The police actively
supported the rioters, almost as if they were accompanying them," Sakina
Inayat Sajid, who lost six of her family and whose husband is missing, said
from her hospital bed. The few policemen she pleaded with for help in
Shehajpuri Patia told her to "go and die elsewhere". But there was
no escape. All exit points had been surrounded by mobs armed with swords,
iron rods, acid and paraffin.
"I do not know how I made it out
alive," said Mehboob Sheikh, a lorry driver, who lost all nine family
members, including his two children. The killings ended when the first troops
arrived."But by then it was too late," said Shabana Abdul Sayeed at
the local civil hospital. "There was nothing left to destroy or
burn."
The roots of the violence lie in the
decade-old campaign by Hindus to build a temple to their god Lord Ram on
the site of a mosque at Ayodhya. The 16th century mosque was razed by
Hindus in 1992, believing the spot to be Ram's exact birth place. This led to
countrywide riots in which more than 2,000 died. The Hindus burned in a train
last week were returning from Ayodhya.
Under instructions from the federal
administration, Ayodhya has been sealed off. Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime
minister, who is confronting his worst political crisis since coming to power
four years ago, has met World Hindu Council leaders and asked them to drop,
or at least postpone their plans in the interests of communal harmony.
The Foreign Office said last night that it
had no further information on Britons caught up in the rioting other than
that Mohammed Aswat Nallabhai, a man from Batley, West Yorks, had been
killed. One of Mr Nallabhai's relatives was injured and two others are
missing.
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Fact 3: On the next day i.e., 1st March an additional 24 Hindus were shot dead and 40 Hindus wounded by POLICE BULLETS.
Fact 4: In the entire period of riots total Hindu casualties were 80 shot dead, and 207 wounded by POLICE BULLETS alone. (But no Delhi-based media showed any interest in giving coverage to these casualties.)
Fact 5: The Muslim counter attack which commenced from 1st March 2002 was no less ferocious. In the first three days alone, out of a total of 611 deaths, 101 were caused by POLICE FIRING. Of these, 61 were Hindus and 40 were Muslims.
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Who died in Police
Firing?
On 2 May, law
minister Arun Jaitley told Parliament it was not true Muslims had been targeted by the Gujarat
government. At the same time, he refused to provide a religion-wise breakdown
of those killed in police firing.
He had good reasons
not to do so.
For on the same day,
the police in Ahmedabad was admitting it had killed more Muslims than Hindus
in its ostensible attempts to stop what was clearly mob violence against
Muslims. ‘Of the 184 people who died in police firing since the violence
began, 104 are Muslims, says a report drafted by Gujarat Police’, Vinay Menon
of Hindustan Times reported (‘Cops admit killing more
Muslims’, 3 May 2002).’The statistic substantiates the allegation … that not
only did the local police not do anything to stop the Hindu mobs; they
actually turned their guns on the helpless Muslim victims’.
For example, on 28 February,
40 men shot dead near the Bapunagar police station in Ahmedabad were all
Muslims, most shot in the head and chest. They had been defending themselves
from a 3000 - strong mob.(Janyala Sreenivas, ‘Who shot them point blank?’, Indian
Express, 9 April 2002).
Though the number of
Muslims and Hindus killed in police firing has been collated by the Gujarat
government, noted Menon,this has so far not been released. ‘Coming out with
the truth would only inflame the situation, it is feared’. The government
argues that in the first 72 hours of violence, more Hindus were killed in
police firing. State home minister Gorghan Zadaphia told Menon : ‘I have data
that shows more Hindus were killed till March 3, but it cannot be disclosed.’
By the third week of
May, 75 of the 105 killed by police firing in Ahmedabad were Muslims.’But the
real numbers,’ said Raveen Thukral, ‘are probably likely to be far larger :
major manipulations are alleged to have been done at the stage of carrying
out autopsies.’(‘The missing are dead, Gujarat toll may go up,’ Hindustan
Times, 24 May 2002).
(Gujarat -- The
Making of a Tragedy ed Siddharth Varadarajan, page 182 )
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Fact 6: As on 5th of March, as many as 40,000 Hindus had had to be given shelter in Relief Camps. (There was plenty of media coverage given to the plight of Muslims in relief camps but no Delhi-based media covered any Hindu relief camps.)
Fact 7: In answer to the Parliament questions, the UPA Home Minister gave the figures of casualties during Gujarat riots. There were Muslims killed 790, Hindus killed 254, wounded 2500 in all missing 223. Thus this proves the lies that what happened in Gujarat was a one-sided affair for every three Muslims who died in Gujarat, one Hindu was also killed.
Such heavy casualties in riot control are UNPRECEDENTED in the entire history of Indian Police. The figures of casualties caused by Police firing in the first three days alone indicate the FEROCITY of Police action. (And the “SECULAR” PARTIES and their MEDIA cohorts even to this day proclaim unabashedly that Modi ordered the Police “to look the other way” to give a free hand to murderers for three days). If they have any respect for TRUTH, they can cross-check the casualties with the records of the concerned hospitals. The Police is duty bound to carry the dead or the wounded in Police firings to the concerned Government hospitals.
With the Muslim counter attack commencing from 1st March onwards till the riots were quelled altogether, what took place in Gujarat was a full-fledged Hindu-Muslim Riot. It was no GENOCIDE, or POGROM, or STATE TERRORISM against the Muslims of Gujarat. “No modern day ‘NERO’ was looking elsewhere”. The modern day Chief Minister was dealing with the situation as best as was possible with the highly limited forces at his command.
Because of the spontaneous conflagration at scores and scores of locations, it is entirely possible that the Police or Fire brigade may have failed to reach a scene for hours, OR, having been spread so thin, the posse of Police that did reach the scene was deterred from intervening by the sheer ferocity of violence at that point in time. But to say that Police was restrained as a measure of Government POLICY is completely belied by the sheer immensity of casualties caused by Police firings.
The critical question centres around the minutes of the meeting of 27 February 2002. Did the CM allow or suggest a free play of Hindu vengefulness in that evening meeting? More particularly, was there a delay in re-questioning army and central paramilitary forces so that one could give a free hand to anti-Muslim rioters?
The question is simple. Did Modi as CM signal or semaphore a set of messages, intentions that legitimated the temporary suspension of the rule of law?
......
Time is fundamental. The violence was not a momentary one. It was prolonged and systematic. One needs to ask that was there no news about it when it was happening? Violence almost summons knee-jerk the idea of curfew or Section 144. Yet curfew was not imposed till 1:00 p.m. on the 28th, while the murders had commenced on the 27th evening. One has to ask: Was curfew delayed to allow for the congregation of rioters to facilitate their activities? Was the delay in curfew a ‘collaborative omission giving free hand to rioters?’ Was this also ‘in compliance with the CM’s instructions in the meeting on the 27th evening?’ Ironically, in some of the least communally volatile areas as in Saurashtra, curfew was imposed by 10 p.m. Finally, one has to ask whether the deployment of police was in terms of real time intelligence provide by the special branches in riot-affected districts. The network of documents from station diaries, periodical situation reports, messages to district and state control rooms, instructions to field officers from the DGP need scrutiny. This becomes all the more imperative given the admission by the Joint CP of Ahmedabad city before the Nanavati Commission. Mr. Shivanand Jha admitted that only one Hindu and six Muslims were arrested as a part of preventive action.
......
The question one has to ask is: Was there a facade of nominalism about the investigation to hide neglect? Consider the background: 54 people arrested in Ahmedabad city on 28 February 2002. None of the people in the list figured in the usual roster of ‘communally-minded’, people generally detained before such disturbances. One has to then ask: Was this a mere statistical display, a logic of clerical numbers assembled to satisfy protest or stem a later inquiry?
If law and order is based on a system of feedback, should one not assess the quality of instructions and the nature of implementation? Consider, for instance, that videographing of rioters is standard departmental practice. Yet the police failed even as the electronic media did obtain a stock of visual data. Was the omission an act of absent-mindedness or a design aimed to prevent identification of rioters? Prima facie there appears a deviousness to the design. We discover that Major General Zahruddin, the area commander, observed that misleading information was conveyed to army units. As a result, they landed in peaceful areas while rioters went unchecked. To avoid this, the army later responded directly to public calls of distress ignoring the local police in the later period of the riots. Incidentally, Zahruddin is the brother of the famous actor, Nasiruddin Shah. Witnesses feel that the assumption or the cloak of immaculate innocence around top officers has to be challenged. Individuals like Ashok Narayan, ACS, and DGP K. Chakravarty have to be interrogated. To pretend they are part of a silent film is no longer acceptable. Truth telling has to be a public act open to public scrutiny.
Among 26 police districts and four (4) Commissionerates, in eleven (11) Districts, namely, i) Amrel, ii) Narmada, iii) Ahwa-Dang, iv) Jamnagar v) Navasari, vi)Porbandar, vii) Surat Rural, viii) Valsad, ix) Surendranagar, x) Rajkot Rural and xi) Kutch- Bhuj, there was no death due to riots, whereas the causalities were negligible (lesser than toll in the previous communal violence in these places ) in five (5) Districts, and in the Commissionerates of Surat and Rajkot. The 5 Districts are i) Bharuch ( two deaths due to violence), ii) Junagadh (two ), iii) Patan (four), iv) Vadodara Rural (four) and 5) Bhavnagar (two) and in the Commissionerate of Rajkot city (4 deaths due to violence).
The position of Surat City violence statistics is quite unique. The city, the second populous city in Gujarat, did report only seven (7) deaths due to violence though in previous communal disturbances, particularly in the 1992 post – Babri Masjid demolition violence, hundreds of citizens were killed. The commendable performance of Surat City Commissioner ( Shri V.K. Gupta- IPS -1977) and his team is in contrast to 326 killings in Ahmedabad city and thirty two (32) in Vadodara city in mass violence.
It is relevant to note that unlike in areas of major genocidal violent incidents (Naroda Patia and Gulbarg society in Ahmedabad City, Sardarpura in Mehsana district, Kidiad in Sabrakhanta district, Ode village in Anand district, Best Bakery located in Vadodara City) wherein more Muslims were killed in police firing, in Surat City where only seven (7) people died in riots, while ten (10) Hindus and one (1) Muslim offenders were injured, in police action. In most of the areas of high voltage anti-minority violence, in police action, overwhelmingly higher number of Muslims were killed. Here is a paradoxical and inexplicably strange phenomena of about sixty percent(60%) of death in police firing and seventy seven percent (77%) of casualties of mob-violence being drawn from the Muslim community. Does not this fact pose a serious question mark on the professional integrity and the commitment to the Rule of Law of the officers of Police and Executive Magistracy, in those notorious riot affected areas. It is pertinent that in areas of less Violence also there were many communally sensitive and volatile localities inhabited by sizeable number of highly communally charged people. The above data on violence is taken from base papers of Appendix (v) of Sreekumar’s Second Affidavit to the Commission dated 06-10-2004.
It is well known that Gujarat State Government, true to its alleged ulterior motive of portraying the 2002 riots as a spontaneous uncontrollable articulation of justifiable ire against the community of the alleged perpetrators of Godhra train fire tragedy by the “victim majority community”, has till date, underplayed or belittled the praiseworthy and model performance of law enforcers in the above mentioned areas of nil or negligible violence.
Significantly, practically all Police Officers who had genuinely enforced the Rule of Law to ensure security to minorities had incurred wrath of Modi Govt. and many of these persons who refused to carry out the covert anti-minority agenda of the CM were punished with disciplinary proceedings, transfers, by-passing in promotion and so on. A few upright officers have to leave the state on deputation.
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The Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government does not acknowledge the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, but is on the same page with it on one facet of the 2002 riots in the state. More Muslims died in police firing during the riots than Hindus, show the government's statistics and the report of
the tribunal headed by former Supreme Court judge justice VR Krishna Iyer.
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More Muslims than Hindus died in firing by policemen
Mahesh Langa, Hindustan Times
Ahmedabad, February 19, 2012
Ahmedabad, February 19, 2012
According to the tribunal, which conducted its own probe into the massacres, this skewed body count defies logic because the riots were largely led by Hindus.
The casualty figures due to police firing vary too. The tribunal states 104 of the 184 people killed were Muslims. Government puts the death toll at 170 - 93 Muslims and 77 Hindus.
According to state government records, of more than 1,200 people killed in the riots, nearly 950 were Muslims.
The riots had erupted after the torching of the Sabarmati Express near Godhra on February 27, 2002.
Most of the 59 passengers killed in the train carnage were kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya.
The tribunal said in its report of November 2002, "The shocking levels of police complicity in the Gujarat carnage cannot be over-emphasised… not only did the local police not do anything to stop the Hindu mobs; they actually turned their guns on the helpless Muslim victims."
In 2004, when Indian Police Service officer Rahul Sharma deposed before the Modi government-appointed Nanavati Commission probing the riots, he had said after more Hindus died in police firing than Muslims in Bhavnagar, Gordhan Zadaphia, the state's the then junior home minister, had asked him to maintain ratio.
Sharma was the superintendent of police of Bhavnagar district during the riots.
According to Sharma, "Zadaphia had called, on March 16, 2002, and said that the toll in police firing in the district was weighted too heavily against the Hindu community as against the Muslims - at 5 to 1."
"I had explained to the minister that the casualty ratio in police firing depended on the composition of the mob… if 90% of the mob is Hindu, then obviously 90% of the casualty will be Hindus," he had deposed.
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Tehelka and the sponsors of Tehelka have once again tried to vitiate communal harmony not only of Gujarat but of the entire country. People overwhelmingly believe that the Tehelka “sting operation” was sponsored by the Congress. If it is so, then, this would be the third major attempt of the “SECULAR” Congress to stoke the communal flames in the country. The first major attempt was made through the Sachar Commission who ordered a headcount of Muslims in India’s Defence Forces. Thanks to the Army Chief who firmly put his foot down to prevent the communal virus from infecting the Army. The second attempt was made when the Government of India filed the affidavit in the Supreme Court, in the Sethusamudram case wherein it QUESTIONED the very existence of Sri Ram. Now by sponsoring Tehelka, “Sting operation” it made a despicable third attempt to communalize the Indian Polity. What Tehelka “Sting operation” has done, clearly attracts Section 153A of the IPC and if Congress has not sponsored this “Sting operation” then it should not hesitate to prosecute Tehelka u/s 153A IPC. As Tehelka as well as the T.V. Channels who aired those tapes are headquartered at Delhi, it is the Delhi Police and consequently the Government of India to take the legal action against them u/s 153A IPC.
Nobody could have had any grouse if “Tehelka” and the T.V. Channels had passed on those tapes to the Supreme Court, for suitable action, or even telecasted the so-called confessions of VHP activists or the BJP MLA for the information of the people. And, if indeed, those confessions are genuine and have any evidentiary value in them, then the law must take its course against those whose guilt is stablished. The real MISCHIEF that attracts Section 153A IPC is the JUXTAPOSITION AND INTERSPERSION of rising flames and bellowing smoke with the earlier recorded bytes of the Gujarat riots, accompanied with crashing cymbals, beats of drums, screaming voices, and the highly provocative comments of the ‘anchors’ of the channels that aired those tapes.
There is a clear intention to inflame communal passions through what all was telecast in the name of “Gujarat ka Sach”, and it would be dangerous for the future of the country if such a nefarious act goes unpunished by default of the UPA Government.
Nobody could have had any grouse if “Tehelka” and the T.V. Channels had passed on those tapes to the Supreme Court, for suitable action, or even telecasted the so-called confessions of VHP activists or the BJP MLA for the information of the people. And, if indeed, those confessions are genuine and have any evidentiary value in them, then the law must take its course against those whose guilt is stablished. The real MISCHIEF that attracts Section 153A IPC is the JUXTAPOSITION AND INTERSPERSION of rising flames and bellowing smoke with the earlier recorded bytes of the Gujarat riots, accompanied with crashing cymbals, beats of drums, screaming voices, and the highly provocative comments of the ‘anchors’ of the channels that aired those tapes.
There is a clear intention to inflame communal passions through what all was telecast in the name of “Gujarat ka Sach”, and it would be dangerous for the future of the country if such a nefarious act goes unpunished by default of the UPA Government.
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The Sting In The Story
September 8, 2012, Issue 36 Volume 9
Print & Email
Exposing a mass crime in the words of the perpetrators themselves should have been enough to nail them. The reality proved much harder. A first-person account of a difficult fight. By Ashish Khetan
Justice returns Babu Bajrangi (left) and Maya Kodnani, a former minister in Modi’s Cabinet
Photos: AFP, AP
Photos: AFP, AP
I WAS over the moon the day TEHELKA’s six-month-long undercover operation onGujarat riots was scheduled to be aired on AajTak and Headlines Today and couldn’t sleep the previous night. The AajTak editor, QW Naqvi, had called the programme ‘Operation Kalank’ — a blot on the nation and democracy. I remember Tarun Tejpal, TEHELKA’s editor-in-chief, go on about how our investigation was going to change the narrative of Gujarat riots and the politics around it.
After all, what we had achieved was groundbreaking. Rioters, conspirators, public prosecutors, Sangh Parivar leaders and a BJP MLA, were all caught on tape confessing to their roles in the 2002 massacre and the systemic subversion of justice in its aftermath. How women and children were hacked and burnt to death, how Ehsaan Jafri was lynched and set on fire, how women were raped, a foetus impaled on a sword straight out of the mother’s womb, how the police had assisted the rioters, how ministers were taking a blow-by-blow account of the ongoing massacre from them, how witnesses were bought or intimidated into silence, how evidence was destroyed, how judges were transferred to secure bail for rioters. All of this was said on record by the very men who did it.
It was unprecedented. Never before in the history of Indian journalism had there been a reportage that had caught killers, rapists and rioters giving a graphic account of their crimes. The first-hand accounts left little doubt that it was a State-sponsored pogrom. And it was all in the can.
We had also nailed the real story of the Godhra train burning. The star police witnesses were caught on camera telling how police had tutored them to give false testimonies and framed a spontaneous communal riot into a cold-blooded conspiracy. They confessed they were party to a police conspiracy, in which respected Muslim leaders of Godhra were falsely implicated to justify Narendra Modi’s “action-reaction” theory.
We, at TEHELKA, were convinced our story would result in a nation-wide uproar. We had over sixty hours of unedited video recordings. We thought the lies of the Modi administration on the Godhra train burning incident would be exposed. We thought that people would demand immediate action. Modi would be forced to resign. The killers would be put behind bars. And victims would get justice.
How wrong we were!
The story was aired on October 2007, on AajTak, for over five hours. Spokespersons from different parties came on TV and reeled off the usual platitudes. The next day some newspapers carried it as a front-page story.
Honestly, on a personal level, I was expecting awards and recognition. But what followed devastated me as a journalist. The Gujarat state election was round the corner and people — which included some responsible human rights activists and Muslim leaders — started a whisper campaign that the sting operation had been orchestrated and sponsored by Narendra Modi himself. The Congress party, which we thought would make our story a national issue, instead tried its best to skirt the revelations made in the TEHELKA tapes. A few Congress leaders even floated the conspiracy theory that as the Congress party was all set to trounce Modi in the upcoming Assembly election, Modi had hired TEHELKA to whip up the communal sentiments of the Hindus by way of inflammatory statements of the riot-accused. On the other hand, the BJP was accusing us of having conducted the sting at the Congress’ behest.
‘We drove Muslims into a khadda and killed them. After that, I called up the home minister and Jaideep Patel…’
Babu Bajrangi, caught on sting
Babu Bajrangi, caught on sting
Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi made a statement in Parliament suggesting that the sting operation was the result of a conspiracy hatched by some BJP leaders sitting in Delhi. He even defended the Gujaratgovernment’s decision to ban the telecast of TEHELKA sting in Ahmedabad. Dasmunshi claimed that Central agencies had solid intelligence of the ‘deep-rooted conspiracy’ and the truth would emerge soon. My brother called me from my hometown in UP and said local Congress leaders were asking him how much was I paid by Modi to do this story. A prominent civil rights activist called me and made a probing enquiry into how we managed to get the accused on camera and how they never suspected my intent.
A Muslim leader from Mumbai came to meet me and alleged that the whole thing was a set-up. How could you get such clear video footage and such good angles with a spy-camera, he asked. I argued that technology had improved and the latest spy gadgets could record clear footage. I tried explaining that as an undercover reporter, I had spent long hours practising angles and placement of camera. I tried telling him how difficult it is for an undercover reporter to first win over the trust of a person and then capture him making self-implicating revelations without arousing his suspicion all along. And all of this in the span of an hour — time that a spycam battery would last. I tried telling him that I took risks in doing this story. How I would frequently change hotels. How I stayed at hotels under bogus names. How I could not sleep at night while in Ahmedabad, the fear of getting caught haunting me all the time. How I had a few narrow escapes when my cover was almost blown. “But the videos were not shot on a spy camera but on an open camera,” the Muslim politician was convinced.
The most dismaying moment for me was when I saw a riot victim, suggesting on a news channel that Modi had stage-managed the sting to polarise the Hindu votes (later she changed her view and appreciated the work done by TEHELKA).
The tapes also contained serious allegations against the functioning of the Nanavati–Shah commission. The special public prosecutor for the Gujarat government, Arvind Pandya, told me the commission was partisan towards Modi, and its proceedings were compromised. After the exposé, the commission issued a statement that it would summon the tapes and look into them. But they never asked TEHELKA for the tapes. Nor did they conduct any inquiry.
Two months later, in December 2007, Narendra Modi dealt a sound drubbing to the Congress at the poll. In private conversations, the Congress leaders blamed the TEHELKA story for their electoral defeat. The morning after election results, a prominent English daily began its adulatory lead story on Modi’s poll triumph by saying, in spite of TEHELKA’s “dubious sting operation”, Modi emerged triumphant.
‘Narendrabhai had come to Patiya… to see the thing did not stop the next day. He saw our enthusiasm and left behind a good atmosphere…’
Among the few human rights activists who stood by TEHELKA’s story was Teesta Setalvad. Realising the immense evidentiary importance of the TEHELKA tapes, she first moved the Supreme Court, pleading that the court take immediate cognisance of the TEHELKA evidence. At the time, the matter of Gujarat riots had reached a stalemate in the Apex Court. The Court had said the tapes would be examined in due course and refused to intervene. At this point, Teesta moved the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and asked for an inquiry into the TEHELKA expose. The NHRC advised the Modi government to give its consent for a CBI probe. Modi declined. His government claimed that since the Gujarat riots were already being inquired into by the Nanavati-Shah commission and cases were pending in trial courts, there was no need for a CBI probe. Overruling Modi, the full bench of NHRC, headed by Justice Rajendra Babu, by its order dated 5 March 2008, ordered the CBI to conduct an inquiry into the authenticity of TEHELKA tapes and the allegations made therein. “The revelations (made in the TEHELKA tapes) bode ill for the future of the human rights in the country,” the NHRC ruled. After months of despair, I saw this as the first glimmer of hope, that perhaps the work done by TEHELKA would not go waste. I was now hopeful that though the story didn’t get the journalistic recognition it deserved, it would go a long way in securing justice for the victims.
The Mumbai wing of the CBI registered a preliminary inquiry and took in their possession the full raw footage, the spy cameras used to record it and the laptop on which it was stored. CBI sleuths recorded my editor’s and my statements. The agency sent the equipment and the footage for forensic examination to a CFSL lab in Jaipur. Six months later, I learnt from newspaper reports that the Jaipur lab found the TEHELKA footage 100 percent authentic.
In March 2008, the Supreme Court constituted a Special Investigations Team (SIT), headed by retired CBI director RK Raghavan, to re-investigate nine major riot cases, including the Godhra train burning, Gulberg Society and Naroda Patiya massacres.
Reversal Relatives of the accused after the verdict
Photo: Mayur Bhatt
Photo: Mayur Bhatt
I wrote to the SIT and asked to depose before it. Soon, I received a communiqué from Raghavan’s camp office and I was told to appear before him. I appeared before the full panel of SIT, which at the time included Geeta Johri, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia — all Gujarat cadre IPS officers. I submitted the full raw footage and the transcripts. I made a passionate plea in my meeting with Raghavan. “If I, as an individual reporter, with no powers other than that of a common citizen, can gather so much evidence and peel off so many layers of judicial subversion and miscarriage of justice, I’m sure that your team with full statutory powers and the mandate given by the Supreme Court can get to the bottom of 2002 riots,” I told Raghavan. All along, the SIT members kept a straight face and didn’t say much.
I didn’t know at the time that what lay ahead was a tortuous journey for the victims and the witnesses. As time went by, the much-hyped SIT only turned out to be a sophisticated version of the Gujarat police — but only slightly. The field and supervisory officers — from sub-inspectors to deputy SP to Inspector General — who were part of the SIT were all drawn from Gujarat police. Raghavan worked as SIT chief in absentia. He visited Gujarat only once or twice every month. The investigation, for all practical purposes, was again back with the Gujarat police.
The probe team recorded my statement about half a dozen times, in five separate cases. It was my first engagement with a police investigation. So far, I had only reported on and critiqued investigations and court proceedings. Now, I was a part of the process. I had reported on the selective application of law. Now, I was experiencing it first-hand. The Investigating Officers mined me for all the evidence that I could provide against the likes of Babu Bajrangi, Mayaben Kodnani and Jaideep Patel.
Every piece of the missing puzzle, as far as the roles of the foot-soldiers was concerned, was carved out of the TEHELKA tapes, corroborated by eyewitness testimonies, and then pieced together to build a case. I was told that the extra-judicial confessions of two rioters — Mangilal Jain and Madan Chawal, both mohalla-levelVHP cadres — recorded on the TEHELKA tapes, was the only piece of evidence to establish how Ehsan Jafri was murdered, and was thus valuable. I was told that revelations made by Suresh Richard and Prakash Rathod — both lower-rung Bajrang Dal members — about the role played by Mayaben Kodnani in the Naroda Patiya riots was crucial. The SIT told me that the testimony of Bajrangi in the tapes had filled the critical gaps in the Naroda Patiya investigation. But the claims made by all of them about Modi were dismissed by the SIT as unsubstantiated averments.
‘If I did not have his support, we could not have avenged Godhra. After it was over, [Modi] was happy, people were happy, we were happy… ’
The then BJP MLA from Godhra, Haresh Bhatt, was caught on record by TEHELKA saying Modi had given senior BJP andVHP leaders three days to unleash mayhem. Bhatt gave the details of a fire-cracker factory where deadly arms were produced and then distributed to rioters. VHP leaders in Sabarkantha took this reporter to a stone quarry and demonstrated how bombs were manufactured and then transported to Ahmedabad. Rioters in every district told TEHELKA that the police had told them they were under instructions to just stand by and not intervene in the Hindu retaliation against Muslims. The killers of Ehsaan Jafri told TEHELKA that the massacre would not have been possible without police cooperation. But all this was dismissed by SIT as unverifiable assertions.
But what the SIT did, in the Godhra train burning investigation, borders on the diabolical. First, it made Noel Parmar, architect of the devious Godhra case, the IO for re-investigating the same case. Yes, Parmar was asked to re-investigate his own case. He was removed only after the victims petitioned the Supreme Court. The new Godhra IO, before recording my statement, did a full-body frisk to ensure that I was not carrying any recording device. Then he asked me about my motivation for doing this sting operation. “Did you want to show the Hindu community in a poor light?” he asked. “I am a Hindu myself. Why would I malign my own community? More importantly, the story was about the heinous crimes committed in the name of religion and not about investigating any religious ideology,” was my response.
While recording my statement, the IO treated me not as a witness but as an accused. He asked me if I had bribed the police witnesses to say what they said on camera. The idea was to discredit my investigation. I told him that if he cared to see the tapes, he would find that all my meetings with the accused and the witnesses, from the time I stepped out of the taxi to enter their residence or office, till the time I came back and sat in my taxi, were all on tape. If there was any allurement, it would be on tape too, I argued. But the SIT authenticated the Gujarat police’s Godhra investigation to the T.
I got a full sense of the odds stacked against the victims in their quest for justice when I was summoned to depose as a critical witness in the Gulberg Society massacre case. The judge before whom I appeared was BU Joshi. Many witnesses had already approached the Gujarat High Court and complained that Joshi was being partisan and unkind towards the victims. A victim, Sairabehn, who had lost her only son in the Gulberg massacre, was humiliated by Joshi in the open court. When Rupabehn Modi — whose son went missing in the riots and on whose life the film Parzania was made — while recounting the events of the day broke down in court, Joshi didn’t even allow her to take a break or have a glass of water. Victims had already petitioned the GujaratHigh Court, asking for Joshi’s removal.
I was not at all worried. I told the public prosecutor, when I ran into him before the start of my testimony, that I could recount the facts of the sting operation even in my sleep. “I have nothing to hide or obfuscate. Moreover, the victims have a tendency to exaggerate. But how could a judge insult or humiliate the witnesses in a trial monitored by the Supreme Court?” I told the prosecution lawyer.
The chief examination — the process where a witness is first allowed to give his testimony — went smoothly. The trouble started with the cross-examination. In the first hour, the judge screamed at me on a few occasions and stopped me from clarifying on a few issues.
At one point, the defence posed a question: “If you are shooting a beauty contest on your camera and you inadvertently record a scene which you don’t need, then do you have the facility to delete it?” The defence insisted I reply with just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. I could clearly sense the defence was trying to entrap me by way of mischievous questions. I replied that the question was unclear, as I needed to know which camera the defence was referring to. Upon this, the judge lost his cool and said everybody in the court could understand the question except me: “Court me baithe sub log samajh sakte hai to tum kyun nahi samajh sakte ho?”
“But,” I insisted, “sir, one can’t tamper with a spy camera. And since it is my spy camera footage that is in question, this is not a question I can reply with just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without giving a clarification.”
‘Narendrabhai got me out of jail. He changed the judges thrice. The 4th judge, Akshay Mehta, did not even look at the file. We were all out ’
At this, Joshi flew off the handle. He said I should not treat the court as if it was a ‘janpanchayat’: “Tum journalist is court ke bahar hoge, yahan nahi. Yaha seedha-seedha jawab do. Defence ke question ko vague kaise kah sakte ho tum. Yeh koi tamasha nahi, court hai.” For over five minutes, he kept screaming at me and even made many unwarranted personal remarks. And it didn’t stop at just that. The defence lawyer also joined the judge in screaming at me. The defence then said, “My Lord, you have just seen this man’s mentality. I’m going to further expose his motives.” After 10 minutes of further humiliation and insults by both the judge and defence, the court finally recorded my reply. I was shattered by the judge’s anger, which was not only uncontrollable but unwarranted too.
The accused who were seated in court were thoroughly entertained. I could see them sniggering at me.
But I decided I would not lose my cool. And continued to answer the defence lawyer’s questions with full clarity.
Seeing that I was not getting perturbed, the judge and the defence lawyer now decided to ridicule and taunt me.
At one point, the defence asked me why I had stung Hindu rioters but not the Muslims who were accused of the Godhra train carnage. I replied that since the accused were all behind bars, I could not have reached them. Upon this, the judge first refused to include this explanation along with my reply and, yet again, insisted that I reply in either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The defence wanted to paint me as communal and biased, and the judge, by insisting on plain ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, was pushing me right into his trap. Joshi then went on to remark that people like me could reach anywhere: “Tum log to kahin bhi ja sakte ho.”
The defence then joined in: “Who knows, if you are secretly recording the proceedings of the court also.” To this, I said I would never do something like that. The defence retorted: “Then maybe you should record it as it will come to your use in the future.” Then the judge and defence looked at each other and chuckled.
I had produced the transcripts of the sting operation against some of the Gulberg massacre accused. The defence asked me: “Do you agree that the common man would not understand the meaning of the dots, which you have used in the transcript to imply a pause in conversation?” I replied, “In transcripts, it’s a common practice to use dots to refer to a pause in the conversation.” The judge intervened: “But do you accept that the common man will not understand the meaning of dots used in transcripts? Do you accept it or not? Yes, right?” The judge was forcing me to give a reply that would suit the defence!
During the cross-examination, the defence asked me details of my residential address in Delhi, whether it was a rented or owned accommodation and the date from which I had been staying there. There were over 50 accused present in the court. To question me at length about my home in their presence was nothing but an intimidating tactic. Sadly, the prosecution also didn’t object to the irrelevance of many such questions. The overall atmosphere in the court was that of willful hostility.
Torched A mob at Khokhra, Ahmedabad
Photo: AP
Photo: AP
If I, a journalist from Delhi working for a reputed newsmagazine with the immunity it affords, could be subjected to this, I shudder to think of the plight of the poor victims and vulnerable witnesses from the minority community in Gujarat. Joshi was later transferred out of Ahmedabad and another judge took over the trial. The verdict on the Gulberg case is still awaited.
I was called to testify in the Naroda Patiya case in December 2011. My testimony against Babu Bajrangi and other accused took four days to record and ran into over 90 pages. The trial was conducted by Judge Jyotsnabehn Yagnik. Not only was she completely impartial and fair in her conduct, she ensured that the defence did not humiliate me to entertain their clients seated in court, during the cross-examination. “Witnesses are the eyes and ears of my court. They come at my invitation and are the guests of this court. You may ask him whatever is relevant to your case but I will not allow you to insult him or make wild remarks about his character,” Judge Yagnik told the defence lawyer.
On 29 August 2012, Yagnik delivered her verdict and held both Babu Bajrangi and Maya Kodnani, among others, guilty of rioting and murders. Seen in the context of Gujarat, the Naroda Patiya verdict is historic. For six years, between 2002 and 2008, even as all major riot cases were stayed by the Apex Court, the rioters roamed the streets ofGujarat, threatening or buying off witnesses.
In 2007, when TEHELKA first met Babu Bajrangi in his stronghold at Naroda Patiya, he seemed invincible. He had just forestalled the release of the Hindi film Parzania in Ahmedabad, as he thought the film would hurt the pride of Gujaratis. While he publicly issued threats to cinema-owners, the government kept mum. There were many newspaper reports on how Bajrangi and his gang were “rescuing” Hindu women from their Muslim husbands by abducting them and forcing them to return to their parents. He had, by his own admission, abducted 957 Hindu girls until then. Clearly, Bajrangi had powerful protectors in the government. “I will not mind if I am condemned to death, but if they ask me my last wish, I’d want to blow up Muslim localities and kill ten to fifteen thousand Muslims before I die,” Bajrangi told this undercover reporter. Bajrangi told me that the police had even manipulated evidence to show his presence at a hospital, away from the scene of crime.
Hellhole The well behind Naroda Patiya in which bodies of victims were dumped
Photo: Cherian Thomas
Photo: Cherian Thomas
Maya Kodnani was an MLA and a powerful minister (minister for women and children’s development) in Modi’s council of ministers. The Ahmedabad crime branch had already told the court that there was no evidence against Kodnani. Both Bajrangi and Kodnani and others like them were confident that the law would never catch up. Hence, the Naroda verdict is an important milestone in the quest for justice. But by no means the final frontier.
The most fundamental questions of the Gujarat riots still remain unanswered. Did the conspiracy to butcher Muslims of Patiya start and end with Bajrangi and Kodnani? Was the conspiracy to kill Ehsaan Jafri and scores of other Muslims at Gulberg Society hatched and executed by local VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders? Or was there an over-arching conspiracy behind these separate incidents spread across the state and involving accused from a section of saffron outfits? Why are there striking similarities in police inaction at different locations? Why almost every rioter TEHELKA met and filmed believed they had the Gujarat government’s full support? Why did Gujaratpolice let off Maya Kodnani? Why had it given a clean-chit to Jaideep Patel?
Almost every rioter TEHELKA met believed they had government support
Why were Hindu rioters allowed bail? Why were public prosecutors threatening and buying off witnesses? Why were investigating officers weakening the evidence? Where is the written record of Narendra Modi’s efforts, in his Constitutional capacity as the chief minister of the state, in quelling the riots? How many meetings had he held with police officials on those three crucial days? Where are the minutes of those meetings? What did Modi do to ensure an impartial and fair investigation post riots? Why was justice secured in only those cases that were transferred out of Gujarat or tried inGujarat but monitored by the Apex Court? These questions may seem too many, but the dark truth is that there are far more unanswered questions that dangle over Modi’s head for his role in the 2002 riots. Until they are answered, these questions continue to hold an entire nation to ransom.
Ashish Khetan is Editor, Investigations with Tehelka.
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Tehelka Investigations Editor Ashish Khetan’s sting investigation into the Gujaratriots played a crucial role in nailing Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi in the Naroda Patiya massacre. The Supreme Court appointed SIT submitted the Tehelka tapes as evidence in the trial court. Ashish Khetan deposed and was cross examined for 4 days. These are excerpts of some of the conversations caught on camera.
(Published in Tehelka Magazine, Volume 9 Issue 36, Dated September 8, 2012)
