From: teesta setalvad Subject: To: Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 8:42 AM http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2010/june10/cover1.html
June 2010 Year 16 No.152 Cover Story DIAL M FOR MASSACRE Clinching documentary evidence corroborates serious charges against Narendra Modi and key officials in his administration BY TEESTA SETALVAD Three months ago, our covert story, SIT-ting on the Truth (March 2010) exposed the frivolous and shallow investigations of the Gujarat massacres undertaken by the high-profile Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court and headed by former CBI director RK Raghavan. One of the major issues raised was the deliberate refusal of SIT – influenced as it was by the three officers of the Gujarat police cadre, Shivanand Jha, Geeta Johri and Ashish Bhatia – to examine available documentary evidence to pin responsibility for complicity and gross dereliction of duty by top police officers, civil servants and politicians. Shockingly, the documents that SIT deliberately overlooked are police control room records, station diary entries, fire brigade registers and, most of all, mobile phone call records of powerful and influential persons: calls received and made between top politicians, civil servants, police officers and the prime accused. The gross failure, deliberate or otherwise, on the part of SIT to do its duty as assigned by the apex court forced us to undertake our own several months long close scrutiny of all these records. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) submitted these findings before the Gujarat government-appointed Nanavati-Shah-Mehta Commission of Inquiry on May 14, 2010. CJP will also soon be filing its findings before the Supreme Court. Needless to say, they have a direct bearing on the critical hearing on SIT’s investigation report pending before the apex court. It may be recalled that SIT (already appointed to investigate nine major investigation into critical carnage cases in 2008) was also appointed by the Supreme Court following a petition of Zakia Ahsan Jafri and CJP asking for court directions for the filing of a First Information Report (FIR) against chief minister Narendra Modi and 61 others on charges of mass murder, criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence and subversion of justice (April 27, 2009). The matter comes up for hearing and scrutiny before the Supreme Court on August 6, 2010. A report in this matter was submitted by SIT member AK Malhotra to the Supreme Court on May 14, 2010. We bring to our readers the findings of our investigation that stretched over six months. Our investigations into the mobile phone records of over 200 individuals have revealed that bureaucrats heading the chief minister Modi’s office (CMO), ministers, top police officers and several of the prime accused were constantly in touch with each other on the critical two days of mass murder, gang rapes and arson – February 28 and March 1, 2002 – following the fire in a coach of the Sabarmati Express on February 27 in which 56 persons were burnt to death. Ensuring law and order is the direct responsibility of the police force. The police officers who came under our scanner include Gujarat’s then director-general of police (DGP), K Chakravarti and PC Pande, then Ahmedabad police commissioner (PC) who Modi later promoted as DGP. Pande who held the post of PC in Ahmedabad at the time of the massacres is widely accused of wilfully allowing the killings to go unchecked. Ironically, the Supreme Court appointed SIT that had access to the CD with over 5 lakh phone call records did not bother to analyze these till witnesses and victims filed applications under section 173(8) of the Code of Criminal Procedure in the Trial Court ion September 2009. Embarrassed by these applications for further investigation SIT was content with taking a few corrective steps. Strangely, Pande received 15 calls from Modi’s office on the morning of February 28, the day the massacre of Muslims began. The fact that Pande did not leave his office after 11 am that day suggests the calls from the office of the top boss were intended to ensure the police did not interfere with the murderous agenda of the rampaging mobs. Stranger still, during the same period, Sanjay Bhavsar (OSD to CM) and Tanmay Mehta (PA to CM) from Modi’s office were in constant telephonic contact with VHP’s Gujarat general secretary Jaideep Patel, a prime accused in the massacres at Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaam. For the CM’S office to be in touch with Patel is indeed intriguing. It is the same Patel who was entrusted by Modi – against a strong advice to the contrary by the district administration – to escort the dead bodies of 56 people (several of them Hindutva activists), who had been charred to death in a fire in the Sabarmati Express on February 27. A compartment in the train had caught fire outside Godhra railway station. Modi’s government and the BJP-VHP allege that the local Muslims had deliberately set the compartment on fire. It was the VHP’s Gujarat bandh call to protest the train deaths that triggered the state-wide violence against the Muslims from the night of February 27 onwards. For the chief minister’s office to be directly in touch at the relevant time with the man accused of leading and inciting the massacres and rapes suggests collusion at the highest level. The then health minister Ashok Bhatt (he still retains his portfolio) was also in telephonic contact with Patel on February 28. Gujarat’s then minister of state for home, Govardhan Zadaphia —forced out of the BJP subsequently by Modi— was also in frequent touch with both Patel and Dinesh Togadia, a VHP activist and brother of VHP leader, Praveen Togadia. Another person, Amit Shah who was heading the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank in 2002 stayed in touch with then joint CP, Shivanand Jha. The same Shah who is today home minister in Modi’s cabinet is desperately seeking cover, reportedly facing imminent arrest by the CBI in Sohrabuddin’s fake encounter case. Former minister for women and child welfare, Maya Kodnani, was arrested by the SIT over a year ago. Her phone call records show that on the day of the massacres (February 28) she was in close touch with additional CP Shivanand Jha. The depositions of witnesses in the Naroda Patiya and Gaam massacres testifying to her incitement of the mobs match with the locational analysis of Kodnani’s mobile. This corroborates her presence at the site of the massacre that fateful day. Minister of state for power, Kaushik Jamnadas Patel, too, had been in touch with Jha as also several other police officers, right down to police inspector KG Erda, who is accused of facilitating the massacres of Muslims in the Meghaninagar locality where the Gulberg society is located. Another police inspector KK Mysorewala, and BJP state president, Rajendrasinh Rana too were in touch with Kodnani and Patel among others, lending corroborative evidence and weight to the conclusion that the massacres within Ahmedabad on February 28 and all over Gujarat thereafter were part of a well-planned conspiracy at the highest political levels. Several key questions arise. Why would so many police officers, from JtCP down to inspectors, be constantly in touch with leaders of an outfit like the VHP? Especially with those of them who were subsequently named by eye-witnesses as leading violent mobs? Why were the cops in touch with ministers? If talking to politicians was in the normal course of duty, then surely the politicians and the police officers must account for the absence of effective police action that day. In other words, if police and politicians were in continuous touch for the right reasons what accounts for the complete failure in controlling the violence? The questions are all the more relevant considering that it was the VHP that gave the call for the bandh on February 28, 2002 and its ideological ally, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), declared its unhesitating support for the same. In view of the above, all arguments in support of a theory of “spontaneous reaction” to the Godhra incident sound hollow. The analysis of the mobile call records unravels many gory tales. VHP men such as Babu Bajrangi – among the prime accused for the massacres at Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaam – and Atul Vaidya – accused of complicity in the massacre at Gulberg Society in Meghaninagar where among others former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri was killed – were also in touch with each other. It may be noted that Meghaninagar and Naroda are in far apart form each other in Ahmedabad city. Why would two accused in two separate incidents of organized mob violence be in touch with each other except by design? It was Bajrangi who boasted about his involvement in the massacre before Tehelka’s hidden cameras (Operation Kalank, 2007). His phone records show that he was also in constant touch with Patel and two others of the VHP on the relevant date. The Gujarat government and its cronies continue to peddle the theory of a spontaneous outburst in explaining the presence of armed mobs in Naroda and Meghaninagar areas and the absence of adequate police bandobast in both places. It is claimed that because these were not among the known communally sensitive parts of Ahmedabad, the police were deployed elsewhere and that is how the armed mobs had a free reign. (Both CP Pande and JtCP Tandon made much the same point while deposing before the Nanavati-Shah-Mehta Commission). But our locational analysis of the mobile phone records reveals a sinister twist that exposes this contention as hollow. What were six persons from Modi’s office (CMO) doing in the Meghaninagar locality where the Gulberg society is located on February 27, 2002, the day of the Godhra mass arson and eve of the massacres? According to the call records, all the six persons from the CMO were in the area during 2.00-5.00 pm that day, while Modi was in Godhra. At the same time, then health minister Ashok Bhatt and Tanmay Mehta (PA to CM Modi) are shown as located at Narol- Naroda between 9.00 am and 5.00 pm. These very locations were the sites of the carnage the next day. How is the presence of key and influential persons here to be explained? What were they doing there, who all did they meet? Even on the day of the massacres at Gulberg Society, Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gaam (February 28) call records show that officials from Modi’s office, ministers Bhatt and IK Jadeja (former urban development minister), and even DGP Chakravarti were present in these areas. The question arises: What were these bigwigs doing in those areas and why could they not stop the killings? Most significantly, the locational analysis of mobile phone records also corroborates the critical, secret and illegal meeting held at the residence of the chief minister on the night of February 27, 2002. The graphs confirm the presence of officers from Modi’s office and senior policemen in and around his residence in Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital. This corroborates the fact that secret/illegal meetings did take place, where instructions to allow free reign to the organised mobs led by men of the VHP/Bajrang Dal are alleged to have been given. What is truly mysterious is why the high-profile SIT specially appointed by the apex court failed to carry out a professional investigation. For example, eyewitnesses and victim-survivors have spoken of the anguished calls made by Ahsan Jafri (before he was finally killed in a bestial fashion) to people at the highest levels in government. Was this mere human lapse or a pre-planned conspiracy at the very highest levels to allow people to be hounded, trapped, raped, molested, burned and killed at the Gulberg Society in an orgy of violence that started around 10 am and went on until 5.30- 6.00 pm? An honest SIT investigation ought to have concentrated on the following facts: ط The post-mortem of the bodies of those burned in the Sabarmati Express (coach S-6) was done hastily at Godhra railway yard itself, allegedly on the insistence of the CM (phone call records between the personal secretary to the CM and the health minister). ط Modi’s insistence on taking the dead bodies to Ahmedabad, that too under the charge of Jaideep Patel, vice-president, VHP and not any government functionary (affidavits of additional chief secretary, home and collector, Godhra filed before the Nanavati-Shah Commission). ط The bodies carried by road to Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad in open trucks against the advice of government officers? ط Call for Gujarat Bandh given by the VHP. ط State government’s endorsement of the bandh through an official press note. ط The CM called a meeting of senior police officers & bureaucrats on the night of February 27, 2002 at which officers were allegedly “advised” not to take action against the riotous mobs the next day and let people vent their anger. (Meeting attended by chief secretary, ACS (home department), DGP, Gujarat, principal secretary to the CM, CP, Ahmedabad city. Testimony of the meeting was given to Concerned Citizens Tribunal by the then minister of state, revenue, Haren Pandya on May 18, 2002 before Justice (retired) PB Sawant, KG Kannabiran and Teesta Setalvad, convenor of the tribunal). Thereafter, over the next two days: ط Positioning of senior ministers/party functionaries at police control rooms to monitor the massacres and to ensure police inaction. ط Muslim residential colonies, shops & establishments identified beforehand. PC Pande‘s role as revealed on analysis of the call records ط Analysis of call records of police commissioner Pande suggest that he is being protected by SIT. ط The phone call records of both Pande and JtCP CP Tandon (see below) show that at the critical time when the latter visited Gulberg Society on February 28 (between 11.43 am and 12.42 pm) when the mob build-up was at its peak, the two spoke to each other six times. For Pande or Tandon to say as they did in affidavits before the commission that neither was aware of what happened at Gulberg Society defies explanation. A close and dispassionate analysis of the police control room (PCR) records of Ahmedabad city co-related with the analysis of mobile phone call records reveal that: ط Adequate forces were not sent to Gulberg society despite repeated calls made to the police control room (PCR) as is evident from its own official records though Pande would get intimations every 15 minutes of the PCR information. ط The first time that the fire brigade was called to Gulberg Society was at 6.55 pm in the evening (February 28) when the massacre was over and the entire colony was aflame. Despite this call to the fire brigade, the official panchnama shows that the fire inside Ahsan Jafri’s home was burning for three-four days after the crime.< -- You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole. -AMBEDKAR http://venukm.blogspot.com http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
