BBC News – Narendra Modi: UK agrees to meeting

Monday, 22 October 2012. The UK’s high commissioner in India is to meet a controversial politician accused of encouraging religious riots, with a view to end a 10-year boycott.

The UK and other Western governments suspended ties with Narendra Modi, chief minister of the state of Gujarat, after rioting in 2002.

An estimated 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslim, three of them British citizens.

But Mr Modi has always denied any wrongdoing.

One of India’s best-known politicians, he has been exonerated by several inquiries.

Close Gujarat ties

He has been tipped as a potential future prime minister, partly because of his record in turning his state into one of India’s economic powerhouses.

Britain has had no official contact with him since the communal riots in Gujarat because of his alleged complicity in the violence against Muslims, which saw hundreds killed by Hindu nationalists.

Many Britons of Indian descent trace their origins to Gujarat, and the government says British interests, such as boosting investment ties, are better served by engagement, not continuing isolation.

But human rights groups and relatives of three Britons who were killed in the riots have criticised the decision to arrange a meeting.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20024563

The Hindu – Contempt notice to Gujarat government

Special Correspondent

Ahmedabad, 15 February 2012. The Gujarat High Court on Wednesday issued a contempt notice to the State government for

not complying with its orders on compensation to some victims whose shops in Ahmedabad were damaged or destroyed

during the 2002 communal riots.   A Bench of Justices Akil Kureshi and C. L. Soni asked the District Collector to file his reply by March 14 explaining why

contempt proceedings should not be initiated against the government.   The order was issued on a petition filed by 56 victims, whose shops in the Rakhial locality in old Ahmedabad were burnt down

in the post-Godhra riots. The shopowners applied for compensation after the Centre had announced an additional relief

package for the victims in February 2008.

The shopowners, through the Jan Sangharsh Manch, filed the petition as they failed to get any response from the Collectorate

on their applications for compensation. In September last, the court directed the Collector to examine the applications and do

the needful.   However, the applicants said, earlier this month they received a communication from the Collector’s office that all 56

applications had been examined and their claims dismissed by the government in August 2011 itself.

The shopowners returned to the High Court with a contempt petition against the Collector and the State government. The

petitioners contended that the Collector’s office did not provide the court full facts of the case during the earlier hearing, as

their applications were claimed to have been disposed of even a month before the court’s order asking the government to examine the applications.  

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2896006.ece

Keywords: The Hindu, 2002 Gujarat pogroms case, victims’ compensation, contempt notice, Narendra Modi government,

India

The Tribune – Post-Godhra riots; HC slams Modi govt for ‘inaction’

Ahmedabad, February 8. In a major blow to the Narendra Modi government, the Gujarat High Court today censured it for “inaction and negligence” during the 2002 post-Godhra riots, holding that this had resulted in an “anarchic” situation.

Passing strictures against the state government, the court said, ” the Gujarat Government’s inadequate response and inaction (to contain the riots) resulted in an anarchic situation which continued unabated for days on”.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala made these observations, while ordering compensation for over 500 religious structures damaged in the state during that period.

“The state cannot shirk from its responsibilities,” the court observed while noting that there has also been “negligence” on the part of the government. “Because of this (such inaction and negligence) there was large-scale destruction of religious properties”.

The government was responsible for repair and compensation of such places, it further said.

The court said when the government had paid compensation for destruction of houses and commercial establishments, it should also pay compensation for religious structures.

The court also ordered that principal judges of 26 districts of the state will receive the applications for compensation of religious structures in their respective districts and decide on it. (PTI)

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120209/main3.htm

The Hindu – First whiff of justice for Gujarat riot victims

Manas Dasgupta

Ahmedabad, 9 November 2011. A special court here on Wednesday sentenced 31 persons to life imprisonment and fined them Rs.50,000 each for burning 33 Muslims alive at Sardarpura in Mehsana district during the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat.

Special court judge S.C. Srivastava, who is the Principal District and Sessions Judge of Mehsana, however, acquitted 42 other accused, 11 of them for lack of evidence and the remaining 31 got the benefit of the doubt. The 31 accused have been asked to submit a solvency bond of Rs.25,000 each and not to leave the country without the court’s permission.

Legal experts said the verdict created history as it was the first case in which a large number of people were convicted for mob violence. It broke the record of the Bhagalpur riots case, in which 14 persons were convicted.

The court did not accept the prosecution’s charge of criminal conspiracy under Section 120 (B) of the Indian Penal Code, which could have attracted the capital punishment, against any of the accused and concluded that the incident took place on the spur of the moment, on the night of March 1, 2002, two days after the February 27 Godhra train carnage.

Of the 76 accused in the Sardarpura massacre, two died during trial. One male was found juvenile, and the case against him is going on in the juvenile court.

The case was prosecuted by a Special Investigation Team, headed by a former director of the CBI. The Supreme Court, which received complaints that the Gujarat police were shielding the rioters, asked the SIT to probe nine incidents of mass violence and get the High Court to set up special courts to try the cases. The 31 convicted have been charged with murder, attempt to murder, rioting and other offences under the IPC, while the charges of criminal conspiracy against them were dropped by the court. Among the IPC Sections applied included 302 (murder) read with other Sections , attracting punishment from one month to 10 years of imprisonment, all to run concurrently.

Among the 31 convicts were 30 from the Patel community and one ‘Prajapati,’ one of the “other backward communities.” They included the then sarpanch of the Sardarpura village, Katrabhai Tribhuvandas Patel, and a former sarpanch Kanubhai Joitaram Patel.

After the Godhra incident, in which 59 Hindu passengers, mostly Karsevaks, were burnt to death, riots broke out across the State.

According to the relatives of the victims of the Sardarpura violence, a mob of over 500 people surrounded a lane named Sheikh Vaas, where the Muslims of the village lived, on the night of March 1, 2002. Fearing the worst, 70 residents took shelter in the only ‘pucca’ house in the locality, owned by a person called Ibrahim Sheikh. The mob attacked the house and set it afire. It later threw in an exposed electric wire. While 33 people, including 20 women and 11 minors, were charred to death, the rest were rescued by the police some three hours later.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2611534.ece?homepage=true

The Hindu – Amicus report lays the ground for chargesheeting Narendra Modi

Rejects SIT’s decision to close case against Gujarat CM

Vidya Subrahmaniam

New Delhi, 23 October 2011. The report of Raju Ramachandran, the amicus curiae in the Zakia Jafri case, has laid the ground for Narendra Modi to be charge-sheeted for his alleged role in the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat pogrom.

The report is still confidential, though it has now been shared with the Special Investigation Team set up by the Supreme Court to investigate and prosecute cases stemming from the 2002 violence in which more than 1200 persons were killed.

According to informed sources in Ahmedabad, who briefed The Hindu on the report’s contents, the report strongly disagrees with the SIT’s view that no case against the Gujarat Chief Minister was made out. It says that only the cross-examination of senior Gujarat police officers, including Sanjiv Bhatt — who stated that he was present when Mr. Modi instructed police officials to allow Hindus to vent their anger — could establish whether the Chief Minister was innocent or guilty.

Significantly, the report also says that Mr. Bhatt’s statement was made probable by the presence of two Ministers in the Ahmedabad Police Control Room (PCR) at the time Muslims were being attacked.

If the trial court accepts Mr. Ramachandran’s view, the sources said, the stage will have been set for the prosecution of the Chief Minister under various sections of the IPC, among them, 153 A (statements promoting enmity between communities), 153 B (imputations and assertions prejudicial to national integration) 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and 166 (public servant disobeying a direction of the law with the intent to cause injury).

Under Section 166, any public servant who disobeys a direction of the law as to how he should conduct himself as a public servant and knowing the act will cause injury is liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term extending to one year. As the chief executive in control of the administration, Mr. Modi was especially under obligation to quell the riots, the sources said.

The SIT was tasked by the Supreme Court to investigate Ms. Jafri’s complaint against Mr. Modi and 61 others. The Court subsequently asked Mr. Ramachandran independently to evaluate the reports filed by the SIT by interacting with witnesses.

The sources said the SIT recommended closing the case against Mr. Modi on the grounds that police officer Bhatt, who was vital to fixing blame on the Chief Minister, was a controversial and unreliable witness. The SIT also concluded that there was no material on record to show interference by the two Ministers who were present in the PCR when Muslims were being attacked across Ahmedabad.

In his testimony to the SIT, Mr. Bhatt had said he was present at the February 27, 2002 meeting where Mr. Modi instructed top police officials to allow Hindus to “vent their anger” against Muslims. The meeting was held late in the evening at the Chief Minister’s Gandhinagar residence. The SIT said none of the other officers present at the meeting had corroborated Mr. Bhatt’s presence.

The sources said the amicus disagreed with the SIT’s conclusions, arguing that evidence has to be weighed and not counted, and this can happen only when Mr. Bhatt and others present at the meeting are cross-examined in the trial court. The amicus’ view was that it would be premature and presumptuous to close the case against Mr. Modi without an adversarial party putting the other officers to rigorous questioning: Mr. Bhatt could turn out to have lied. Equally, other officers present could turn out to have lied.

The amicus was in fact credited with the view that the presence in the police control room of two Ministers unconnected to the Home portfolio probablised Mr. Bhatt’s statement. More so because the SIT had itself suggested that the Ministers had the Chief Minister’s blessings (Tehelka magazine which scooped the SIT report quoted Mr. Raghavan as saying that the presence of the two Ministers fuelled speculation that they were there with Mr. Modi’s blessings.)

If the view of the amicus is rejected by the SIT, Ms. Jafri and her co-complainant Teesta Setalvad will have the option to contest it in the trial court. The court can also form its own, independent opinion on the views of the amicus.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2563188.ece?homepage=true