Ex-police officer spills the beans on Gujarat riots

[Naveed Yaseen]

* Says BJP’s Hindutva mascot CM Narendra Modi was involved in high-level conspiracy against Muslim minority

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: A retired top Indian police officer has thrown new light on the 2002 anti-Muslim genocide in western state of Gujarat. In a lengthy letter to the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chief RK Raghavan, Jaspal Singh, also a former minister has asked for a probe into official records of communications and meetings.

He said these would establish BJP’s Hindutva mascot Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s hand in the anti-Muslim riots. Singh has also demanded interrogation of Modi on what instructions he gave during the riots and subsequently and whether he noticed any acts of omission or commission by the officers, and if so, what action he had initiated to correct the system and discipline those who flouted their duties. Since government functionaries who collaborated in executing the anti-minority violence would refuse to provide relevant evidence, Jaspal Singh wants the SIT to run through documentary evidences on government and police records and then confront them with forensic tests.

He says such a probe would bring out that “the mayhem in Gujarat was the result of a thoroughly thought-out elaborate and heinous strategy to communalise the society at large in Gujarat, with a view to derive political benefits”. Information coming from Jaspal Singh, who has been the city’s police commissioner and then the mayor, is quite revealing as he himself once flirted with the BJP, more so when he claims the 2002 carnage helped the Sangh Parivar achieve “their ever-pursued hidden agenda of treating the Muslim minority as second
class citizens”.

Giving details of documentary evidences that would spill the beans, he said, “SIT should go into the series of circumstances indicating criminal motive of the CM Gujarat and his collaborators in projecting the Godhra train fire incident as an outcome of conspiracy by ISI and a terrorist act.” Jaspal claimed a meeting chaired by Modi on February 27, 2002 was the “starting point of anti-minority carnage” and the motivated declaration of ISI hand in the train fire was a part of the larger conspiracy to perpetuate genocidal crimes against the minority for political consolidation of the majority community in favour of BJP.

He has urged the SIT to check the minutes of the crucial meeting chaired by Modi on the day of the Godhra train fire, and interrogate the ministers and eight officers who attended the meeting. Jaspal Singh has also demanded interrogation of Rajendra Kumar, the then CBI joint director incharge of Gujarat, who insisted on the state DGP to deem the burning of train at Godhra as a terrorist act mounted by the ISI.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg7_45