Scripting the riot

One of the Gujarat government’s explanations for the widespread nature of the 2002 post-Godhra riots was that it was a spontaneous expression of popular anger. Not only is this explanation an insult to the people of Gujarat — since it made them out to be cold-blooded killers who thought little of going on an extended burning, raping and killing spree — it has little bearing with reality. The fact is that this massacre was carefully and willfully choreographed by powerful actors with the support, tacit or otherwise, of the forces of law and order in the state. It has still not been clearly established who these people were — even a year and a half after these gruesome events. This is because those in power in the state have followed up their unconscionable inaction when the state was burning with a cynical disregard for the ends of justice in the weeks and months that followed.

Instead of painstakingly sifting through the evidence to get at the truth, the attempt seems to have been to bury it. The very fact that the Gujarat government did not consider doing what this newspaper has done — in its on-going investigation of the contents of two compact discs containing the cellphone calls made in Ahmedabad during the period of the greatest disturbances — indicates its lackadaisical, if not obstructionist, approach in this matter. These CDs, remember, were available to the Gujarat police since April but obviously little use was found for them. State DGP, A.K. Bhargav, after dismissing them as being of “little value”, had however to admit to The Sunday Express that “they can be used to trace the movements of the accused”. So why was this crucial effort not made? Could it be that the Gujarat police was more keen to close the cases rather than get at the truth?

The scrutiny of the phone calls of two important leaders — Jaideep Patel, state general secretary of the VHP, and Mayaben Kodnani, the BJP’s MLA from Naroda — as well as the attempt to match them with the attacks that flared up in Naroda Patiya, that had witnessed some of the worst disturbances in the state, reveals some striking similarities. Both Patel and Kodnani were exonerated. Today, they shrug off the fresh evidence as inconsequential, but the fact that they were in telephonic contact with those directly accused of having led the killings is extremely important information. Murder, they say, say, will out. Mass murders, however, often get hidden under a veil of anonymity. Perhaps we are now entering an era when those who perpetrate such crimes will find it increasingly difficult to melt into the woodwork thanks to new communications technology.