Indian Minorities Advocacy Network (ImanNet), the oldest advocacy organisation of Indian Americans for pluralism and democracy, has demanded that Narendra Modi be sacked as the Gujarat chief minister and the militant organisation, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, be banned, after clear proof emerged that the 2002 Gujarat pogrom were unleashed by VHP with the connivance of state government.
“The transcripts of the police communications that are now unearthed proves that Gujarat pogrom was conceived, designed and perpetrated by the VHP and that the state government collaborated, abated and participated in riots,” said Dr.ShaikUbaid, national president of ImanNet, in a statement on 15 April.
For the past decade, the Gujarat government and senior BJP leaders have lied that the anti-Muslim pogroms of 2002 were an ‘instantaneous reaction’ to the train fire in Godhra that killed more than 50 members of Hindutva extremist movements. The chief minister, Narendra Modi, himself in an interview on March 1, 2002 had said, “What we are witnessing in Gujarat at this time is a chain of action and reaction. We want that there neither be action nor reaction.”
Dr.Ubaid was instrumental in launching the Coalition Against Genocide that launched the successful campaign in the US to revoke Narendra Modi’s diplomatic US visa thus derailing his campaign to become the prime minister of India in 2005, Dr.Ubaid stated that the uncovering of proof of Modi’s complicity in the pogrom will derail his current campaign as well.
ImanNet also demanded an investigation to find out why these communication records of the police control room were not used by the Special Investigation Team to draw its conclusions because it had the transcripts in its possession all the time. “The Supreme Court should take the SIT to task and appoint a new investigation team,” demanded Saeed Patel, a board member of ImanNet.
“We will contact the relevant US governmental agencies to launch an investigation into the affairs of VHP America,” said Patel
Now Headlines Today has uncovered the police control room messages and the state intelligence bureau reports which show that the police had received a constant stream of inputs from its field officers about VHP leaders making provocative speeches, about crowds being mobilised and warnings about the possibility of major riots breaking out. Despite the flurry of ground reports and advance warnings, no curfew was imposed in Ahmedabad till noon the next day. The BJP government supported the VHP called bandhs that, as events turned out, proved to be the pretext under which violent mobs were mobilised. VHP leaders were not warned or put under preventive detention.
But the most intriguing aspect of these messages is that while they have been produced before the court as annexures, they don’t find any mention in the 541-page closure report filed by the SIT. No attempt has been made by the SIT to reconstruct the sequence of events as they unfolded immediately after the news of Sabarmati train incident broke. The SIT did not assess the adequacy or appropriateness of the state’s response in a chronological fashion as the law and order collapsed in large parts of the state.