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New York:
Authorities in India’s Gujarat state are subverting justice,
protecting perpetrators, and intimidating those promoting
accountability 10 years after the anti-Muslim riots that killed
nearly 2,000 people, Human Rights Watch said in a report published
ahead of the tenth anniversary of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
"The state government has resisted
Supreme Court orders to prosecute those responsible for the
carnage and has failed to provide most survivors with
compensation", Human Rights Watch said in its report published
February 24, 2011.
The violence in Gujarat started on February 27, 2002, when a train
carrying Hindu pilgrims was attacked by a mob and caught
fire, killing 59 people. Blaming Muslims of the incident,
in a retaliatory spree by Hindu mobs, hundreds of Muslims were slaughtered, tens of thousands were
displaced, and countless Muslim homes were destroyed.
“The 2002 violence against Muslims in Gujarat persists as a dark
blot on India’s reputation for religious equality,” said Meenakshi
Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of
prosecuting senior state and police officials implicated in the
atrocities, the Gujarat authorities have engaged in denial and
obstruction of justice.”
Efforts to investigate and prosecute cases inside Gujarat were
stalled and activists and lawyers involved in the cases have been
harassed and intimidated, Human Rights Watch found. It has taken
repeated interventions by the Supreme Court following appeals by
activists and victims’ families to order re-investigations,
oversee independent inquiries in some cases, or shift trials out
of Gujarat to ensure progress towards justice.
In the past decade, increasing evidence has emerged of the
complicity of Gujarat state authorities in the anti-Muslim
violence, Human Rights Watch said. In 2002, Human Rights Watch, in
its report on the riots, quoted a police officer who said that
there were no orders to save Muslims. Human Rights Watch also
reported that the government’s political supporters had threatened
and intimidated activists campaigning for justice.
While investigations in the Godhra train attack proceeded rapidly,
investigations into cases related to the anti-Muslim riots that
followed were deliberately slowed down or simply not pursued,
Human Rights Watch said. Officials of the Gujarat state
government, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is serving its
third term running the state government in Gujarat, failed to
conduct serious investigations and obstructed justice. State
courts dismissed many cases for lack of evidence after prosecutors
effectively acted as defense counsel or witnesses turned hostile
after receiving threats.
State police failed to investigate senior BJP leaders despite
telephone records proving their presence at the scene of the riots
in Naroda Patia and Naroda Gaam, and witness testimony that these
senior leaders provided the mob with lethal weapons and instigated
attacks on Muslims.
It was only in March 2009, after the Supreme Court-appointed
Special Investigation Team took over the inquiry, that two
leaders, Mayaben Surendrabhai Kodnani, a minister in the state
cabinet, and Jaideep Patel, a leader of the Hindu militant group
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, were arrested for aiding and abetting a mob
that killed 105 people, injured several others, destroyed
property, and sexually assaulted women. Both are still on trial.
Strong evidence links the Modi administration in Gujarat to the
carefully orchestrated anti-Muslim attacks, Human Rights Watch
said. Rioters had detailed lists of Muslim residents and
businesses, and violence occurred within view of police stations.
An independent media organization, Tehelka, used hidden cameras to
capture some of the accused speaking openly of how the attacks had
Modi’s blessings.
In August 2011 the Gujarat state government filed charges against
a police officer, Rahul Sharma, for passing on Kodnani’s and
Patel’s telephone records to the judicial commission inquiring
into the violence.
In September, another senior police officer, Sanjiv Bhatt, was
arrested after his former driver filed a complaint alleging that
Bhatt had threatened him into signing a false affidavit that on
February 27, 2002, after the Godhra attack, Chief Minister Modi
had, in Bhatt’s presence, instructed the police to “allow the
Hindus to vent their anger.”
Bhatt alleges that this showed that Modi gave instructions to the police to allow the attacks on
Muslims. In 2005, a police officer, R. B. Sreekumar, was denied a
promotion because he criticized the Modi government for its
failure to order prompt action that could have prevented the
riots.
In 2005, the US government denied Modi a visa to visit the United
States.
“Modi has acted against whistleblowers while making no effort to
prosecute those responsible for the anti-Muslim violence,” said
Ganguly. “Where justice has been delivered in Gujarat, it has been
in spite of the state government, not because of it.”
The National Human Rights Commission and the Indian Supreme Court
have ordered investigations in response to appeals from victims,
lawyers, and human rights activists. In 2004, the Supreme Court
called for a review of 2,000 cases that had been dismissed due to
lack of evidence. After fresh inquiries, the police said they
reexamined 1,600 cases, arrested 640 accused, and opened
investigations against 40 police officers. However, only a small
number of these cases have been brought to court and only a few of
these resulted in convictions.
In March 2008, the Supreme Court strongly criticized the Gujarat
administration’s attempted cover-up of its role in the massacres
and ordered a Special Investigation Team to investigate nine
crucial cases under its supervision. The Supreme Court had earlier
stayed trials in some of these cases after victims and activists
appealed, pointing out that the Gujarat police had failed to carry
out proper investigations, and that the accused with connections
to the political establishment were granted bail or simply dropped
from inquiries.
Two of the Special Investigation Team cases have resulted in
convictions: a special court in Gujarat in November 2011 sentenced
31 people to life in prison for the killing of 33 Muslims in the
village of Sardarpura in Gujarat’s Mehsana district in March 2002.
The case against those who attacked the train in Godhra resulted
in 31 convictions and 62 acquittals.
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court intervened to ensure fair
trials in what is known as the Best Bakery case. In this case, a
mob attacked and burned down the Best Bakery in Vadodara, killing
14 people, including 12 Muslims. In a trial before a “fast-track”
court, all 21 accused were acquitted in June 2003 after several
witnesses turned hostile, later admitting that they had faced
intimidation. Following intervention by the Supreme Court, a
retrial in Maharashtra state resulted in convictions in 2006 of
nine of the accused, each sentenced to life in prison.
Inone major trial, of those accused of attacking Bilkis Yakub
Rasool Patel and her family, the Supreme Court found that
intimidation of witnesses and the police bias in favor of the
accused were so strong it transferred the case from Gujarat to
Maharashtra. In 2008, a Mumbai lower court convicted 12 people in
the gang-rape of Bikis Bano and the murder of 14 members of her
family.
Another important case concerned the killing of 69 people,
including a former Congress Party member of parliament, Ehsan
Jafri, at the Gulmarg Society, a Muslim neighborhood. In a
petition against Modi and 62 other officials, Jafri’s widow, Zakia
Jafri, accused the Modi administration of “inaction” to contain
the riots and “various acts of omission and commission.” She
alleged that her husband had continuously called and appealed to
top officials in the police and the government, including the
chief minister, but no one came to the rescue of the people
trapped inside the walled residential compound. A local court in
February will start hearing a Special Investigation Team report to
the Supreme Court after questioning several people, including Modi.
The report has not been made public, but Modi’s statement denying
any role in the violence has been leaked.
“The Supreme Court has been indispensable in compelling the
government to do its job to hold the people responsible for the
Gujarat violence accountable,” Ganguly said. “Successful
prosecutions of cases moved outside Gujarat show that the
government can provide adequate protection to victims and
witnesses when it wants to.”
The Gujarat courts, in contrast, reacted slowly to the riots,
Human Rights Watch said. However, in February 2012, the Gujarat
High Court issued a contempt notice to the Modi government for
failing to compensate 56 people whose shops were destroyed during
the riots. The High Court also ordered the government to fund the
repair of nearly 500 religious buildings that were targeted during
the riots, which the court described as "negligence of the state."
New instances of harassment, threats, and intimidation against
activists and lawyers involved in 2002 riot cases are being
reported, Human Rights Watch said. In a January 27, 2012 affidavit
to the Supreme Court, Teesta Setalvad of the Citizens for Justice
and Peace alleged continuing legal harassment in which she was
accused of manipulating evidence. She said that these attempts
were “a sordid sub-text of the struggle for justice that the
petitioner and her organization, who have stood by the struggle
for ten long years, have had to suffer this indignity of vicious
and mala fide allegations.”
On February 21 the Supreme Court criticized the Gujarat government
for initiating a probe against Setalvad for her alleged role in a
case of illegal exhumation of the bodies of the 2002 riot victims.
The court said it was a “100 percent spurious case to victimize"
her and that bringing such a case “does no credit to the state of
Gujarat in any way.”
“In addition to ensuring that the top officials in the Gujarat
state government involved in the riots are brought to justice,
Indian courts need to expedite remaining cases and protect
activists,” Ganguly said.
“Ten years on, India owes it to the
victims of the Gujarat riots to end the culture of impunity and
prosecute those responsible for this open wound on the country’s
reputation.”
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