Gujarat: 2002 riots
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
No govt role in 2002 riots: Godhra panel
Commission Submits Final Report To Guj
More than 12 years and 25 extensions later, the Nanavati commission on Tuesday submitted its final report on the post-Godhra riots, including 4,160 cases of violence between February 27 and May 31, 2002, to the Gujarat government.
“The commission has concluded there was no direct involvement of the state government in cases of rioting, but it felt there was a scope for improvement in the police department to control the violence,“ a source close to the panel said. The panel comprises retired Supreme Court Justice GT Nanavati and retired high court Justice Akshay Mehta. They handed over the report, running into more than 2,000 pages, to Gujarat CM Anandiben Patel. “It's up to the state government to make it public,“ said Justice Nanavati, who refused to comment on the contents of the report.
About the delay in completing the inquiry , he said, “We would have submitted the report earlier. There was a delay of more than two years because the SIT refused to share investigation papers with us. Also, because of (IPS officer) Sanjiv Bhatt, who frequently moved the HC.“ The panel had submitted its first report on the burning of the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express in Godhra in September 2008, where it said the attack, in which 59 people had died, was a planned conspiracy . For inquiry into the postGodhra riots, the commission went through 46,464 affidavits submitted by riot victims. It also examined 4,000 witnesses, including former home minister Gordhan Zadafia and IPS officers Bhatt, PC Pande, RB Sreekumar and Rahul Sharma.
Despite ample scope for examining ministers and then CM Narendra Modi, the panel did not question him, which indicates that there is no indictment of him in this inquiry . Asked about this on Tuesday , the judges said, “No comments, please.“
Nanavati: More cops could've checked riots .Former SC judge Justice G T Nanavati on Tuesday said that he strongly feels that the incidents of rioting in Gujarat in 2002 could be controlled only by strengthening the police force in numbers because, at present, the strength is much below the requirement. When asked about the prolonged rioting in 2002, he said that the police were short of staff as it always has been in order to quell violence.
Panel Dismisses 3 IPS Whistleblowers’ Accounts
Sanjiv Bhatt’s alleged meeting at CM’s residence
Panel Dismisses 3 IPS Whistleblowers’ Accounts: The Godhra Inquiry Commission has not found any merit and has rejected the claims of three police officers whose charges and submissions had alleged the involvement of the Gujarat government and its machinery in the 2002 post-Godhra riots. Team TOI reports Bhatt lying about CM meeting: Probe report
Dismissed IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who had in 2011 filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court implicating the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi for alleged involvement in the 2002 communal violence, was lying and made up the story of him attending a meeting at the CM’s residence on February 27. This is the conclusion of the Nanavati Commission. The commission also said that Bhatt used a false document, a fax message, to support his presence at the meeting.
“On consideration of evidence, it clearly appears that Bhatt is not telling the truth with regards to what happened in the meeting held on February 27, 2002, at the CM’s residence. Claims made by him of being present in the meeting appear to be false,” stated the second part of the report of the ‘Commission of Inquiry’ by Justice G T Nanavati and Justice Akshay Mehta.
“...Obviously, his version about what was discussed and what was stated by the CM and others in that meeting is a story now made out by him and deserves to be discarded as false,” the report stated. Bhatt, a 1988-batch IPS officer, who was deputy commissioner, intelligence, in the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB) in 2002, had stated on affidavit in the SC that he had attended the February 27 meeting at the CM’s residence in Gandhinagar. He said Modi had instructed Gujarat Police and the state administration to ‘refrain from resorting to strict action and to permit the majority community to vent their anger at the minority community’.
In 2015, Bhatt was dismissed from police service on grounds of ‘unauthorized absence’. He has now been in jail for more than a year, after being given a life sentence in a 1990 Jamnagar custodial death case and being denied bail in a 1996 drug planting case. Significantly, the commission said it found that the copy of a fax message, purportedly signed and sent by Bhatt on February 27, to support his claim of attending the meeting, was actually sent on March 2, 2002, by P P Upadhyay, about an incident at Pandarva in Panchmahal.
The commission relied on statements and affidavits of senior IPS officers, such as the then Gujarat DGP K Chakravarthi, home secretary K Nityanandam, secretary to CM Anil Mukim and even Narendra Modi, to refute Sanjiv Bhatt’s claims of attending the CM meeting. Bhatt had claimed that he reached the CM’s residence for the meeting by accompanying Chakravarthi in his car.
The commission stated there was no reason for Chakravarthi to direct anyone from the IB to accompany him to the meeting of top police officers.
Rahul Sharma’s call details
The Nanavati inquiry commission refused to trust call details supplied by former IPS officer Rahul Sharma, on the grounds that he could not furnish the CDs on which the data was originally stored.
The call details gathered by Sharma had stirred up a hornet’s nest because collusion between rioters and government officials and politicians was alleged after analysis of this data. Sharma, who got the CDs from the private telecom companies in 2002, copied the data on to his personal computer and said he sent the original CDs to crime branch. He provided the data to the commission, but not via the original CDs. The whereabouts of the original CDs are not known.
The commission’s refusal to accept call details as evidence was based on authenticity of the data. In the absence of the original CDs and non-production of the original data which he copied on his computer from the original CDs, the data contained in the CDs produced before the commission cannot be accepted as reliable and correct, held the commission The inquiry commission’s conclusion that Sharma’s CDs were not reliable was also based on the testimony of former state home minister Gordhan Zadaphia, who said that he had not made certain phone calls which the analysis of data from Sharma’s CDs reflected.
Sreekumar’s claims reaction to dept action
The Nanavati inquiry commission held as false the claim of former IPS office R B Sreekumar that the state machinery had deliberately remained inactive during the 2002 riots because of illegal instructions from the chief minister.
Justice G T Nanavati commission concluded that the then intelligence bureau chief Sreekumar had an axe to grind with the state government as departmental action was initiated against him. “R B Sreekumar in one of his affidavits stated that many illegal instructions were given orally to officials by the chief minister. No such allegation was made by him either in his first affidavit or when he gave evidence before the commission. This allegation is made after some departmental action was initiated against him. From his subsequent affidavits, it is clear that he is a disgruntled officer,” the commission said.
Sreekumar had filed multiple affidavits, running into hundreds of pages, before the commission.
The commission also rubbished Sreekumar’s claims that he used to maintain a semi-official diary, in which he had noted illegal oral instructions given to him. The inquiry report said this creates doubt that the officer prepared the diary at a later stage. “There was no reason for him to keep a register and diary of such illegal instructions,” it reads.
The commission also said that Sreekumar supplied two pieces of false information to the commission – about his knowledge of the trouble being caused by karsevaks travelling on the Sabarmati Express and that members of UP police were on the train. “Placing such false material before the commission further raises a doubt regarding the motive of Sreekumar. Instead of assisting the commission by placing facts before it, it appears that because of action taken against him, he is prepared to make even false allegations against the Gujarat government to malign it,” the commission said, discarding his allegations against the then CM Narendra Modi and top officials.
Jafri didn’t call me: Modi to panel
The Godhra and post-Godhra inquiry commission report states that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat when the 2002 communal riots erupted in the state, told the commission that he did not receive any call from ex-MP Ehsan Jafri on February 28, 2002, when Gulbarg Society was attacked by a mob. The commission’s findings seem to validate Modi’s statement.
The commission said Gulbarg Society riots survivor and key witness Tanaz (Rupa) Mody had furnished conflicting versions about the purported calls made by Jafri to CM Modi. In her first affidavit, she said that Jafri made calls to several people seeking help. In her affidavit with the the SIT in 2008, she claimed ‘Jafri had telephoned Narendra Modi but he said he did not get a positive response’.
“We have every reason to believe what she has stated about the telephonic talk between Mr Jafri and Mr Modi and the lack of positive response from Modi is an afterthought, and cannot be accepted,” the commission stated.
The commission report also contains the PM’s written response to questions raised by the panel. The PM submitted to the commission that former CM Amarsinh Chaudhary did not mention ‘any particular incident of violence at any particular place’ when he met him. Former CM Chaudhary told the commission that after all attempts to get help to Jafri failed on February 28, 2002, he met Modi at 2pm on the same day and apprised him of the danger to the lives of Jafri and others at Gulbarg Society.
Modi also told the commission that IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt never met him. Bhatt, had stated in his submission to the panel that he had informed the CM about the danger to Jafri’s life at a meeting held by CM in the early afternoon of February 28.
“On consideration of rival versions and evidence regarding what the chief minister does in such situations and what he did, it appears to the commission that what Sanjiv Bhatt has stated is not true” the commission said.
Repairs of damaged religious structures
SC sets aside Gujarat HC order on repairs of shrines, August 29, 2017: The Times of India
The Supreme Court set aside the Gujarat High Court order asking the state government to pay for the reconstruction and repair work of religious structures damaged during the 2002 post-Godhra riots.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice P C Pant allowed the Gujarat government's appeal challenging the High Court verdict that it should pay for reconstruction and repair works of religious structures damaged during riots.
Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who had represented the state government, said that "our plea has been allowed" and moreover the state government had told the court that it was willing to pay from ex-gratia amount for repair and reconstruction works of various structures, shops and houses which were damaged.
The court was hearing an appeal filed by the Gujarat government against an order of the high court directing it to pay compensation to over 500 shrines damaged during the 2002 riots, triggered after the Godhra incident.
Relief for riot victims
Bilkis Yakub Rasool
Dhananjay Mahapatra, April 24, 2019: The Times of India
The Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat government to provide Rs 50 lakh, a job and a house to Bilkis Yakub Rasool as compensation for the ordeal she suffered as a 21-year-old in the 2002 riots when a mob gang-raped her and killed her threeand-a-half-year-old daughter.
Advocate Shobha, representing Bilkis pro bono since 2003 in the SC, and who had successfully got the trial transferred to Mumbai from Gujarat, narrated her 17 long years of suffering.
“She has been stripped of every vestige of dignity, has no means to support herself and leads a nomadic life with small assistance offered by two NGOs. A compensation of Rs 1 crore would be just and proper,” she pleaded.
On March 29, Shobha had rejected Rs 5 lakh interim compensation offered by the Gujarat government to her client.
Visibly moved by the plight of Bilkis, whose dreams of a normal life were shattered by the riots when mobs ran amok in the aftermath of the burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra which killed 59 kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya, a bench of Chief Justice Of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna said Rs 50 lakh would be just compensation. They also ordered the state to provide Bilkis with a government job and accommodation at a place of her choice.
‘₹429 cr paid to Guj riot victims in 4 years’
Victims of the 2002 Gujarat communal riots have cumulatively been paid a compensation of Rs 429.46 crore between 2007 and 2011, junior home minister G Kishan Reddy said in a written submission in the Rajya Sabha. The information was provided in response to a question by MP Hussain Dalvi, who sought to know whether it was a fact that while more than 2,000 cases were registered during the 2002 riots, most were blocked and closed and it was only when the Supreme Court got involved that a few were reopened and placed under court-monitored special investigation teams . TNN
