Gujarat riots: Is Modi guilty or not? End the suspense please

Close to a decade on, there’s no full stop yet to the curious turns and twists in the Gujarat riots conundrum, more specifically the role played by Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the whole episode that remains a deep, unhealed scar on the nation’s conscience. The political class and a section of the media have been playing a partisan game, aimed at confusing the issues more than resolving them. The intervention of the Supreme Court, though well-intentioned, has not brought us any closer to the truth.

In 2009, the apex court had ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the allegation that Modi, his ministers, police officials and senior bureaucrats were complicit in the riots in 2002. The team, headed by RK Raghavan, submitted its report in May 2010. The content of the report, submitted to the court in a sealed cover, intriguingly, became the subject of intense public debate with different sections of the media claiming to have accessed it and coming up with different conclusions after putting their own spin to the supposed finding of the team.

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Most of it revolved around either giving Modi the clean chit or implicating him in the riots cases. The SIT’s motives and conduct were questioned too.

[caption id=“attachment_116045” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Modi’s alleged instructions to his officials to allow Hindus to vent their anger after the Godhra attack may not amount to conspiracy to murder. Reuters”]  [/caption]

On 6 May, the Supreme Court, in an apparent snub to its own SIT, found discrepancy between the evidence gathered by it and the inference drawn there of. It asked senior lawyer Raju Ramachandran to consider independently if there is evidence against Modi and others. The amicus curiae was given the liberty to interact with the witnesses and police officers named in the SIT status report directly.

Now, Ramachandran’s report, also submitted in sealed cover to the apex court in August this year, is out in bits and pieces.

Modi’s alleged instructions to his officials to allow Hindus to vent their anger after the Godhra attack may not amount to conspiracy to murder but could form the basis of prosecution under various Sections including 153 A, 153 B, 505 and 166 of the IPC. These deal with statements promoting enmity between communities, imputations and assertions prejudicial to national integration, statements conducing to public mischief, and public servant disobeying a direction of the law with the intent to cause injury, says an Indian Express report.

The report (Ramachandran’s) is also said to have underlined that there is enough reason to further examine the claims of IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt about that meeting with Modi on 27 February, 2002, and the presence of two ministers in the control room during the post-Godhra riots, the report adds.

It is not clear how much weight the amicus curiae’s report carries. The Supreme Court has, according to media reports, already made it clear that the SIT is free to decide whether to include Ramachandran’s findings in its submission to the local court hearing riot cases.

If the SIT decides to dump his views then what was the whole point in asking him to undertake the exercise of looking into Raghavan’s report in the first place? The court, at some point, could be flooded with petitions seeking that the amicus curiae’s report be made part of the court cases. The net result would be more litigation and more delay.

The report makes Sanjeev Bhatt, the senior IPS officer who have been at loggerheads with the Modi government, a crucial link in the progress and direction of the case. The SIT had dismissed Bhatt’s statement against the chief minister, citing his claim that he was present at the controversial meet convened by Modi on 27 February 2002, was rejected by other policemen present. Moreover, he was an unreliable witness given his controversial nature.

Bhatt, on the other hand, has been claiming from all platforms that he has credible evidence against the government and Modi in particular since as a senior intelligence officer he was privy to all sensitive information. He says he would produce the information when asked to do so by an appropriate authority.

He should not be such a big problem. The courts have to deal with facts and credible information; it does not matter whether the person in possession of these has dubious credentials. The Supreme Court should facilitate eliciting information from him through an appropriate order. It would end all the avoidable controversies around the officer.

It is high time the suspense around the Gujarat riots and Modi came to an end. The more delayed it is the more it would keep the chief minister’s political ambitions hanging in a balance. It would also leave the victims of the riots on tenterhooks for no justifiable reason.