By
IOL South Asia Correspondent
NEW
DELHI, June 6 (IslamOnline) - Continuing with its blame-Muslims policy
for the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, the BJP government in the
state is now trying to implicate them legally.
The
state government filed charge-sheets June 3-4 in two of the most
horrendous incidents of burning alive hundreds of Muslims in
Ahmedabad's Gulbarg Society and Naroda Patia areas. The official
charge sheets accuse the victims of having allegedly "incited the
mobs" to kill them.
Ahmedabad's
Crime Branch on June 3 filed the official charge-sheet in the Gulbarg
Society massacre of February 28, in which labor union leader and
former Congress member of Parliament Ehsan Jaffri was burnt alive
along with 38 others.
A
total of 31 people who are still being described by the administration
as "missing," are believed to have also been burnt alive by
the frenzied VHP-controlled 20,000-strong mob which surrounded the
locality that day. Many of those burnt, including Ehsan Jafri, were
lynched first by the extremist mob which later returned to burn them
to eradicate all signs of their crime.
Reports
say that the former MP’s home, where more than a hundred people had
taken refuge believing that it wouldn’t be touched by the marauders,
was so badly torched that it was impossible to figure out how many
people were burnt there. The charge-sheet says there were 109 people
in the society.
In
Ahmedabad's Naroda Patia area too, more than a hundred people were
burnt alive by a similar well-armed mob the same day. This area not
only witnessed the burning alive of more than a hundred people, but
also unprecedented sexual atrocities against Muslim women. More than
25 women are reported to have been sexually abused in full public
glare and then burnt alive. Now the police claim in the charge-sheet
that it were Muslims who "incited" the mob to target them.
Many
human rights and NGO reports have come down heavily on the partisan
behavior of the Gujarat police which, when not actually taking part in
the pogroms, watched from the sidelines.
The
charge-sheet in Gulbarg society case starts with the allegation that
the Godhra train attack and "firing" by Ehsan Jafri on the
mob, which had gathered outside the society, led to the massacre of 39
persons February 28. The charge-sheet included the forensic lab report
of the gun used by Ehsan Jafri when he fired at the mob in
self-defense. The charge-sheet also includes a forensic report on the
charred bodies recovered from the site as well as on the contents of
the near-empty canisters recovered from the site.
The
charge-sheet filed by assistant commissioner of police, S.S.
Chudasama, in the court of metropolitan magistrate R.I. Raval, names
50 accused. Prime accused Kailash Dhobi and 24 others have been
arrested while 25 others are still at large.
June
3 was the last day to file the charge-sheet and had the police not
filed it , a total of 50 people, accused in the highly sensitive case,
would have got bail in view of the mandatory 90-day deadline since the
first arrest was to expire at the end of that day. The 50 persons who
were charge-sheeted have been accused of murder, rape, arson, looting,
criminal conspiracy, unlawful assembly and attack on police. The
charge-sheet also includes postmortem reports of 39 bodies and injury
reports of the victims.
“The
case is water-tight. With so many eye-witnesses giving their
statements before the Crime Branch ever since this department took
over the riot investigations on May 1, the accused look destined for
the gallows,” police officials said.
 |
|
Muslim
woman whose house was burnt down |
A
day later, June 4, a charge-sheet naming 23 persons in the Naroda
Patia killing was filed. Here again the government tried to project
that the Muslims "offended Hindus" who then took revenge.
According
to the charge-sheet, the two communities clashed with each other,
pelting stones. The Hindu mob turned violent after a driver of a
mini-truck, a Muslim allegedly ran over a Hindu youth killing him on
the spot. It also cites the recovery of a mutilated body of a Hindu at
Hussain Nagar as a cause inciting the mob. No such incident was ever
reported in Ahmadabad before filing of this charge-sheet.
This
is not the first time the government directly tries to accuse Muslims
for abetting rioting. After the Godhra train incident, when the
anti-Muslim pogrom was inaugurated with deadly precision, the state
government said that it was a "reaction" of the Godhra train
incident. Later, it also accused Ehsan Jafri of inciting the
well-armed mob to attack the colony when he fired in the air to scare
away the mob. Human rights bodies have asked for an independent probe
in this unproved allegation.
Every
report, including the one submitted by India’s official human rights
organization, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), accuses the
state government of abetting riots and protecting the rioters. The
NHRC clearly says that it cannot expect justice being delivered by
those who helped and abetted riots.
The
NHRC's final report clearly says: “The Commission would like to
underline that it is a central principle in the administration of
criminal justice that those against whom allegations are made should
not themselves be entrusted with the investigation of those
allegations. It has universally been the practice to act on this
principle, including in this country.”
But
in Gujarat, the accused politicians and the tainted police are doing
this white-wash job to save their skins.
The
charge-sheets do not include the names of state ministers and BJP
leaders who reportedly led mobs in many of these massacres including
Gujarat's home minister Zadafia who went about displaying the
"V" sign during the riots and from whose official residence
shots were reportedly fired on Muslims.
The
charge-sheets also do not include the names of the BJP MP from Naroda
Patia, Ms Maya Kotnani, and VHP leader Jaideep Patel whose names have
been mentioned by the victims.
While
Gujarat is yet to limp back to normalcy, the cynical state government
and the ruling party are saying that they are ready for the state's
legislative assembly elections. This was even stated by the Gujarat
Governor Sundar Singh Bhandari Wednesday. Bhandari is a hardcore RSS
man who sits in the governor house courtesy BJP.
