INFIRM LOGIC

How the SIT report gave the Modi government a free pass on the 2002 Gujarat violence 

- HARTOSH SINGH BAL

IN JUNE THIS YEAR, the Supreme Court dismissed charges of criminal conspiracy against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others in relation to the 2002 Gujarat violence. Immediately after the judgment, the Gujarat police arrested the activist Teesta Setalvad and RB Sreekumar, a former director general of the state police. Along with the former police officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who is already in jail, Setalvad and Sreekumar were accused in a first-information report, filed by a police official, of forgery and fabricating evidence, among other things, to implicate "innocent" people.

On 27 February 2002, the Sabarmati Express carrying Hindu karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, caught fire near the Godhra railway station. Gujarat witnessed intense communal violence for three days, which spilled over into the following months. Mobs killed over a thousand people, most of them Muslims. Many more people were injured, and over a hundred and fifty thousand people were displaced. Modi, who was the state's chief minister at the time, faced severe condemnation both at home and internationally for his government's inaction to stem the violence. The anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 remains a bloody stain on Modi's career, despite his meteoric rise to political power.