07, Jun 2017

The widespread communal violence that engulfed the state of Gujarat in 2002 was orchestrated. A sinister plot that had been meticulously and minutely pre- planned. Through the material unearthed and analysed over the past eight and a half years, it has become increasingly evident that the carnage was supported and orchestrated by none other than the highest echelons of the state government supported by its bureaucracy. There were numerous efforts at the time, to stifle the state machinery and prevent law and order from taking its normal course. Even as of today, the investigations into the role played by politicians, police officers and civil servants by way of actual involvement and by way of complicity and deliberate inaction has not been undertaken adequately and thoroughly.

Evidence collected, both documentary and otherwise by official channels before the tragedy of 2002 (reports of State Intelligence, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and other states) and after (affidavits of police officers before the Nanavati-Shah Commission and Tehelka’s Operation Kalank) suggest that this conspiracy could well extend even prior to February 27, 2002 when the tragic burning of the S-6 Coach of the Sabarmati Express took place at Godhra. The burning alive of 59 persons in the railway coach was converted by the masterminds of mass murder into the trigger for the brutal post Godhra carnage.

The victims of the 2002 violence still seek justice. Their struggle for justice is not only against individual perpetrators but against the mighty power of the state machinery of Gujarat. The chief minister at the time remains chief minister today and controls the portfolio to ensure law and order in the state, a cruel irony (Cabinet Minister for Home). The minister of State for Home Govardhan Zadaphiya is today been investigated by a Supreme Court appointed team. A minister that occupied the post of MOS Home after the elections in December 2002, Amit Shah has today been chargesheeted for murder, extortion and destruction of evidence. The tragedy of Indian democracy is that the perpetrators have been twice elected back to power in the state. The Criminal Justice System has once again proved to be far from adequate. Prosecutors were appointed who had earlier appeared for the accused and who were associated with organizations involved in the criminal offences, bail orders were granted out of turn by the lower and higher courts in Gujarat to ensure that that the politically influential accused were moved freely in areas and neighbourhoods of their influence that were also the sites of the worst carnages.

Even after the Supreme Court intervened, following the persistent efforts by victim survivors, eye-witnesses and legal rights groups, the Gujarat Government’s brazen efforts to influence the course of justice continue. All prominent defence counsel appearing in the major massacre trials are special public prosecutors of the state of Gujarat in other criminal trials ensuring hefty legal renumeration at the Gujarat tax payer’s expense and moreover signalling a collusion between the state and perpetrators still continues through collaboration in their common egal defence. In the past until the Supreme Court was alerted of the fact that special public prosecutors belonged to the ruling party and its sister outfits like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, it was men with allegiance to the masterminds and killers who were entrusted with the Constitutional task of ensuring justice to the victims of mass carnage in Gujarat.

There have been a number of attempts by the Gujarat state’s PR machinery and Chief Minister himself to completely deny the fact that the communal violence was “state sponsored” and instead term it as an emotional reaction to the burning of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express. But the data, statistics and evidence provided herewith will dispel any false claims proclaiming the same.

The details provided hereunder are all verifiable, public and official records which speak for themselves.