The SIT report, scooped by Tehelka magazine, damns Narendra Modi – no clean chit here – and itself
On December 3, 2010 while the contents of the Special Investigation Team’s May 2010 report (on the role of Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 61 other top politicians, civil servants and police officers in the 2002 genocidal targeting of Muslims in Gujarat) – which had been placed before the Supreme Court – was yet to be made public, The Times of India splashed “news” on the front page of all its editions headlined, ‘SIT clears Narendra Modi of wilfully allowing post-Godhra riots’. Treating this obviously planted “news” as gospel truth, TV news channels mindlessly jumped on the bandwagon, announcing to the nation that Modi had been given a “clean chit”.
Needless to say, the “news” brought great joy to the sangh parivar camp. It inspired the BJP leader, LK Advani, to pontificate on his blog: “In my 60 years of political life I have not known any colleague of mine so consistently, so sustainedly and so viciously maligned by opponents as Narendra Modi.” His eulogy of Modi ended with the words: “The Times of India and several other papers have reported that the SIT has found no evidence to substantiate the charge and has exonerated the Gujarat chief minister. The country is eagerly awaiting the full text of the SIT report to the Supreme Court.”
But Hindutva’s glee proved to be short-lived. Modi’s manipulation of the media came to naught and the media itself was left red-faced when Tehelka scooped the 600-page SIT report to show that, far from a clean chit, the SIT had severely indicted Modi on a number of counts. Dissecting the report, Tehelka proceeded to reveal how, while indicting Modi, the SIT had damned itself as well. In 2010, survivor eyewitnesses and CJP had petitioned the Supreme Court, complaining that the SIT was not honestly adhering to the mandate it had been given by the apex court. That the SIT’s work was, in part at least, an exercise in rank dishonesty is now obvious from a perusal of its own report made public by Tehelka.
The SIT report should be read as a not-so-clever attempt at a balancing act. The SIT could not possibly give a total clean chit to Modi without opening itself up to national and international ridicule. After all, Modi and his government are sponsors of India’s first mass killing in the era of “Live TV”. Besides, there are several fact-finding reports – of the National Human Rights Commission, of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal headed by three retired Supreme Court and high court judges (Crime Against Humanity), of the Editors Guild and by Communalism Combat in its special issue, ‘Genocide: Gujarat 2002’ – to contend with. Also, it is not for nothing that Modi continues to be treated as a pariah by many within India, even BJP allies in the former NDA government, and internationally (Modi is denied a US visa). And then there are the depositions of several highly credible persons before the SIT itself.
So what does the SIT do? It severely castigates Modi on several counts but, contradicting its own findings, concludes that “the substantiated allegations did not throw up material that would justify further action under the law”. But half-hearted investigations and inexplicable conclusions notwithstanding, the SIT report still amounts to a sufficiently damning indictment of the Gujarat chief minister. Enough for the Supreme Court to take the justice process further.
Tehelka reported that the SIT found Modi guilty on several counts (see box, ‘Truth talks’).
As Tehelka rightly points out, “It is significant to note that the SIT probe against Modi and his government was severely limited in its scope and authority. The report was merely a ‘preliminary inquiry’. The inquiry officer had no powers to carry out search or raids, effect arrests, interrogate the accused in police custody or compel the government and individuals to produce crucial records. The only method left to the probe officer was to record statements… The inquiry officer has noted with pain that hardly any bureaucrat or police officer was inclined to tell the truth, as most of them had got lucrative government assignments after retirement and a few who didn’t were still not willing to antagonise the powerful chief minister.”
The most telling example of the reluctance or the refusal on the part of bureaucrats and police officers “to tell the truth” pertains to the critical meeting on the evening of February 27, 2002 where Modi issued a firman before an assembly of eight top bureaucrats and policemen, stating that in the aftermath of the death of kar sevaks in the Sabarmati Express earlier in the day, Hindus must be allowed to vent their anger. During their deposition before the SIT the acting chief secretary, Swarna Kanta Verma, and the additional chief secretary (home), Ashok Narayan, “pleaded loss of memory due to passage of time”! Four officers – K. Chakravarti (DGP), K. Nityanandam (home secretary), PC Pande (Ahmedabad police commissioner) and PK Mishra (principal secretary to the chief minister) – categorically denied that the chief minister had instructed the police not to control Hindu mobs for some days. One officer, Anil Mukim (additional principal secretary to the chief minister), simply denied having attended this meeting at all.
Three different versions from seven top officials – telltale signs surely, of an operation cover-up. As the SIT chairperson, RK Raghavan, himself observes in his comments: “the three officers (PC Pande, PK Mishra and Ashok Narayan) had been accommodated in post-retirement jobs and are therefore not obliged to speak against the chief minister or the state government” (page 4 of chairman’s comments).
That a cover-up is what it is all about is evident from the account of the eighth officer who was also present at the meeting and who told the SIT off the record that Modi did say: “There is a lot of anger in the people. This time a balanced approach against Hindus and Muslims will not work. It is necessary that the anger of the people is allowed to be vented.” His name is Sanjeev Bhatt. Currently a deputy inspector general, he was deputy commissioner of police in the State Intelligence Bureau during the 2002 carnage.
Bhatt told the SIT that he attended the meeting as the next in command because the state intelligence chief, GC Raiger, was away on leave and the DGP had insisted on a senior intelligence officer being present. But the SIT chose to disbelieve his claim of being there simply because the other officers did not confirm his presence at the meeting to which, the SIT presumed, so junior an officer could not have been invited. But curiously, the same SIT had no problem acknowledging the fact that this “too junior” officer was present at another meeting called by Modi, on February 28, 2002, even though by then Bhatt’s boss had cut short his leave and returned to Ahmedabad.
And just as curiously, Tehelka reports that during his own deposition when Modi was asked by the SIT to name those who were present at the meeting on February 27, he named the others and then volunteered the information that Sanjeev Bhatt was not present. Why was he proffering unsolicited information? Could it be that he was aware of what Bhatt had told the SIT? How did Modi hear of what Bhatt had said? The SIT however was content to conclude that Bhatt’s account could not be given credence because his presence at the meeting was itself in doubt.
Why did Bhatt make his statement about Modi’s diktat off the record? Why did he choose not to put it on record? Here is the answer in the SIT report: “He (Bhatt) has stated that he attended this meeting in his capacity as an intelligence officer and as per his belief, it would not be professionally appropriate on his part to divulge the exact nature of discussions that took place during the said meeting. However, he would be duty-bound to disclose the same to the best of his recollection and ability as and when he is required to do so under legal obligation.”
Significantly, Bhatt also told the SIT that though the slain Gujarat minister, Haren Pandya, did not attend the meeting on February 27, he was very much there, sitting in an adjoining room. Pandya was killed within weeks of it becoming public knowledge that while deposing before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal in May 2002, he had disclosed that such a meeting had in fact taken place, where Modi had issued his totally unconstitutional and criminal directive that people should be allowed to vent their anger.
The Tehelka report is commendable in that it highlights the findings of the SIT which damn Modi even as it castigates the SIT for its half-hearted job, its failure to pursue critical leads to their logical end and for arriving at conclusions contrary to its own findings: all to Modi’s advantage.
To cite a few examples:
“Top cop RB Sreekumar produces a mountain of evidence about unconstitutional acts by Narendra Modi but the SIT says no other bureaucrat is ready to corroborate his version of events.”
“By its own admission, there are several crucial records that the SIT has not examined. Mainly, they are:
- Phone call records of fixed landlines and mobile phone records of crucial persons in the government, including Modi.
- Television channel recordings of critical events like the events at Sola Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, where the victims of the Sabarmati carnage were taken.
- Logbooks and station diaries maintained at police stations during the riots.
- Case diaries maintained by police officers investigating the riots.
- Files pertaining to the appointments of public prosecutors after the riots.
- Files relating to transfers of different police officers immediately after the riots.
- Records related to intelligence inputs both by the State and Central Intelligence Bureaus both before and after the riots.
- Security logs of the chief minister and other senior officials, showing their movements during the riots.
- Records of the army and central paramilitary forces showing not just their deployment but also permission from civil authorities to use force and firearms. Just a cursory glance at that list suggests there is a mountain of evidence that has not even been looked at yet.”
- Readers of Communalism Combat are well aware of the magazine’s and CJP’s efforts in the pursuit of truth and justice for the victims and survivors of the worst communal carnage in India since 1947. To ensure a meaningful investigation, we have ourselves analysed phone call records and other documentary evidence and submitted these to the SIT at great personal risk. This evidence reveals that subversion has included destruction of crucial records – while the Supreme Court “watched” the case – by itself a serious offence overseen by the Gujarat ministry of home affairs headed by the chief minister. Here we applaud Tehelka for its own dogged pursuit of the same objective over the years and for holding up a mirror to the rest of the media.
The complete Tehelka reports can be read at www.tehelka.com:
‘Here’s the smoking gun. So how come the SIT is looking the other way?’: February 12, 2011; ‘The Artful Faker’: February 12, 2011; ‘I was there. Narendra Modi said let the people vent their anger’: DIG Sanjeev Bhatt: February 19, 2011
Truth talks
We reproduce the main findings of the SIT against the Modi government as highlighted in the Tehelka report
- “In spite of the fact that ghastly and violent attacks had taken place on Muslims at Gulberg Society and elsewhere, the reaction of the government was not the type that would have been expected by anyone. The chief minister had tried to water down the seriousness of the situation at Gulberg Society, Naroda Patiya and other places by saying that every action has an equal and opposite reaction” (page 69 of the SIT report).
The inquiry officer also notes: “His (Modi’s) implied justification of the killings of innocent members of the minority community read together with an absence of a strong condemnation of the violence that followed Godhra suggest a partisan stance at a critical juncture when the state had been badly disturbed by communal violence” (page 153). - The report says: in an extremely “controversial” move, the government of Gujarat had placed two senior ministers – Ashok Bhatt and IK Jadeja – in the Ahmedabad city police control room and the state police control room during the riots. The SIT chairman comments that the two ministers were positioned in the control rooms with “no definite charter”, fuelling the speculation that they “had been placed to interfere in police work and give wrongful decisions to the field officers”. “The fact that he (Modi) was the cabinet minister for home would heighten the suspicion that this decision had his blessings” (page 12 of chairman’s comments).(It is to be noted that Ashok Bhatt’s cellphone analysis showed that he was in touch with VHP leader Jaideep Patel, a key conspirator of the Naroda Gaon and Naroda Patiya massacre, and with Gordhan Zadaphiya, the then minister of state for home who is now seen by the SIT as a major culprit of the Ahmedabad massacres.)
- The report affirms that police officers who took a neutral stand during the riots and prevented massacres were transferred by the Gujarat government to insignificant postings. The SIT’s Raghavan has termed these transfers “questionable”… (pages 7-8 of chairman’s comments).
- The report says: “The Gujarat government has reportedly destroyed the police wireless communication of the period pertaining to the riots.” It adds: “No records, documentation or minutes of the crucial law and order meetings held by the government during the riots had been kept” (page 13).(This is a shocking finding. Why were these official records destroyed? What was there to hide?)
- The report says Modi displayed a “discriminatory attitude by not visiting the riot-affected areas in Ahmedabad where a large number of Muslims were killed though he went to Godhra on the same day, travelling almost 300 km on a single day” (page 67).
- The SIT confirms that the government appointed VHP and RSS-affiliated advocates as public prosecutors in sensitive riot cases. The report states: “It appears that the political affiliation of the advocates did weigh with the government for the appointment of public prosecutors” (page 77).
- According to the report, the Gujarat government did not take any steps to stop the illegal bandh called by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on February 28, 2002. On the contrary, the BJP had supported the bandh (page 69).
(It is important to remember that it was Hindu mobs mobilised by the local VHP and BJP leaders in the name of bandhs that had carried out the horrific massacres at Naroda and Gulberg Society on February 28, 2002.) - The SIT report also says that in an inexplicable move, the police administration did not impose curfew in Naroda until 12 p.m. and Meghaninagar (Ahmedabad city) until 2 p.m. on February 28, 2002. By then the situation had severely deteriorated at both places.
- According to the SIT, despite detailed reports recommending strict action submitted to Modi by field officers of the State Intelligence Bureau, the Modi government failed to take action against a section of the print media that was publishing communally inciting reports, inflaming base emotions. This had vitiated the communal situation further (page 79).
- The SIT discovered that the state police had carried out patently shoddy investigations in the Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society massacre cases. It deliberately overlooked the cellphone records of sangh parivar members and BJP leaders involved in the riots – prominent among them were the Gujarat VHP president, Jaideep Patel, and BJP minister, Maya Kodnani. If these records had been analysed and used as evidence, it could have established their complicity (pages 101-105).
- Many senior police are now being investigated by the SIT for their suspected complicity in the riots. The former Ahmedabad joint commissioner of police, MK Tandon, in whose area around 200 Muslims were killed, has been found guilty of deliberate dereliction of duty. (Post the riots however, far from being censored, he got one lucrative posting after another and retired as additional director general of police in June 2007.) His junior, former deputy commissioner of police PB Gondia, has also been found guilty of wilfully allowing the massacres. The SIT says that if the two had just carried out their duty, hundreds of Muslims could have been saved (pages 48-50). Neither of these officers was held accountable by the Modi government.
- The SIT has also found evidence against the then minister of state for home, Gordhan Zadaphiya (who was reporting directly to Modi), for his complicity in the riots. Another BJP minister, Mayaben Kodnani, has already been booked in the Naroda Patiya massacre (pages 168-169)
Archived from Communalism Combat, , March 2011 Year 17 No.155, Investigation