15April13

08, May 2017



April 15, 2013
Press release

Mrs
Zakia Jafri files her Protest Petition

A cold-blooded and
clear-cut conspiracy to manipulate the tragic Godhra incident —
from the moment of the terrible news  — was planned and executed by
Chief Minister Mr Narendra Modi (Accused no 1), in close
consultation, especially with then Health Minister Mr Ashok Bhatt
(accused no. 2) , Urban development minister, IK Jadeja (accused no
3) and other co-accused cabinet colleagues and especially VHP leader
Mr Jaydeep Patel (accused no 21), with whom the CM was first in
touch with soon after the tragic Godhra incident. This was aimed at
ensuring that the tragedy at Godhra becomes ready fuel for the
meticulously planned massacre of innocent Muslims all over Gujarat.

Mrs Zakia Ahsan
Jafri today filed her Protest Petition praying for the rejection
in toto
of the SIT final report dated 8.2.2012, making a cogent
case for the charge-sheeting of all 59 accused listed in her
complaint dated 8.6.2006, beginning with Mr. Modi the chief minister
of Gujarat.

The protest
petition that runs into 514 pages also has three volumes of
annexures and ten CDs. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) with
its entire legal team has assisted in this painstaking and
voluminous exercise.

The Petitioner
strongly argues that the Supreme Court appointed Special
Investigation Team (SIT) had adequate documents and statements to
come to a prima facie finding against all the accused. SIT, however
decided to cover up the crimes and has gone out of its way to
misguide the Court and give a clean chit to the accused.

Phone call records
show Mr Modi (accused no 1, A-1) to have been in close touch with Mr
Jaideep Patel (A-21) immediately after information of the Godhra
tragedy comes in, even before he meets home department officials and
ministers. Thereafter, there is a hasty and publicly conducted
post-mortem at Godhra, out in the public against all law and
procedure while a crowd of VHP workers was present. Mr Modi is
present while this happens.

Thereafter, while
passions are being cynically stoked, another sinister decision to
hand over the dead bodies of Godhra victims to VHP strongman Mr
Jaideep Patel (A-21) is taken at a mini-cabinet meeting presided by
Mr Modi in Godhra, at which co-accused ministers are physically
present. Mr Jaideep Patel too is present at the meeting. Then Godhra
district magistrate, Mrs Jayanti Ravi has clearly stated that Mr
Jaideep Patel was present at the meeting. 

The Protest
Petition goes into great detail, relying on documents from the
investigation papers, on how the administration and police were
deliberately paralysed and neutralised by the conspiracy hatched by
Mr Modi, Co-accused, then Gujarat DGP Mr K Chakravari (A-25), then
police commissioner, Ahmedabad, PC Pande (A-29), then additional
chief secretary, home, Mr Ashok Narayan (A-28) and other key members
of the bureaucracy and police who connived as co conspirators in the
conspiracy.

Key field reports
from the SIB (state intelligence bureau) from all districts were
given to the SIT by January 2010, i.e., full three and a half months
before the SIT submitted its first investigation report to the
Supreme Court on 12.5.2010. These reports reveal a grim ground level
reality: gross provocations and bloodthirsty slogans by VHP workers
from 4 p.m. onwards on the afternoon of 27.2.2002 (“Khoon ka
badla khoon se lenge”, blood for blood)
while Mr Modi had still
not left for Godhra.  

Phone records of
the chief ministerÂ’s office (CMO) reveal that he went to the airport
to catch a helicopter for Godhra via Meghaninagar where the massacre
at Gulberg society the next day was organized. Phone records of the
CMO also show that after landing in Ahmedabad from Vadodara by
aircraft (where he had travelled by road from Godhra on his return
journey) too, Mr Modi and officials of the CMO who accompanied him
are located at Meghaninagar late evening (mobile phone call
records).

Just a week before
the Godhra incident, on  22.2.2002, Mr Modi had won in the Rajkot
bye-election by a slender margin (a few thousand votes). The glory
of his victory had been dimmed with minority votes going heavily
against him. Former CPI leader and later Parliamentarian from the
Congress, Ahsan Jafri had been an active campaigner against Mr Modi
in the bye-election lived in Gulberg Society, in Meghaninagar. 

In a sinister
furtherance of the conspiracy, the late night meeting at Mr ModiÂ’s
residence effectively neutralised the police and administration from
doing its constitutional duty. The Protest Petition states that the
credibility of the evidence related to the critical 27.2.2002
meeting must be tested during trial and that it was not the job of
the investigating agency to pre-judge the issue, acting like a court
overstepping its jurisdiction to protect and save powerful accused. 

Evidence from
Police Control Room (PCR) records submitted by Mr. PC Pande to the
SIT after 15.3.2011 reveal cynical and cold-blooded mobilization of
RSS workers and VHP men at the Sola Civil hospital from 4 a.m.
onwards on 28.2.2002 in aggressive anticipation for the arrival of
the dead bodies. Repeated PCR messages, that the home department
under Mr. Modi (A-1, who held the home portfolio) and Mr PC Pande
(A-21) were trying to conceal, show that both in Ahmedabad and in
several locations all over Gujarat crowds were mobilized to
aggressively parade bodies with bloodthirsty sloganeering, inciting
mobs to attack innocent Muslims.

The then joint
police commissioner, Ahmedabad, Mr Shivanand Jha, also an accused in
the complaint (A-38), was jurisdictionally in charge of Sola Civil
Hospital in Zone 1. As the messages extracted below show, repeated
PCR messages desperately ask for bandobast; they speak of the staff
and doctors of the hospital being under threat; of a 5,000-6,000
strong mob accompanying the bodies and finally one message also says
that “riots have broken out.”

Yet Mr Modi, the
entire Home department and the accused under him and individuals
accused including Mr Chakravarti (A-25) and Mr PC Pande (A-29) in
collaboration with the SIT have strived hard to conceal this
evidence. While such aggressive funeral processions were allowed in
Ahmedabad, an equally explosive situation prevailed simultaneously
in Khedbrahma, Vadodara, Modasa, Dahod, Anand etc. A cynical
government under Mr Modi and his co-accused conspirators has done
their level best to conceal this evidence. 

The PCR records —
that the SIT was trying hard to conceal — also reveal that while
the Ahmedabad police under Mr PC Pande and the home department 
under Mr Modi and then MOS, home Mr Gordhan Zadaphiya (A-5 ) had
enough forces to escort a VHP leader known for his inciteful
slogans, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, from the airport to the Sola Civil
hospital to accompany the processionists, shouting filthy hate
speeches and murderous slogans. But they did not have enough forces
to send to Naroda Patiya where 96 persons were massacred in broad
daylight (charge-sheet figures in the Naroda Patiya case, though
more deaths have been recorded) and 69 persons at Gulberg society
the same day and around the same time aggressive processions were
being allowed. Mr Modi allowing and openly supporting the bandh and
neutralising his administration, decided to give the RSS, VHP, BD
mobs a free run of the Gujarat streets to massacre innocents. 

As bad or worse
were the provocations and hate speeches that were cynically allowed
and encouraged by Mr. Modi and his administration. PCR messages of
Ahmedabad and SIB messages from all over the state are testimony to
this incendiary mobilisation.


Warnings Ignored
(from SIB and PCR messages)

12:30 pm on the 27th February: An SIB officer through fax no 525
communicated to the headquarters that there were reports that some
dead bodies would be brought to Kalupur Hospital station in
Ahmedabad city. “So communal violence will occur in the city of
Ahmedabad; so take preventive action.”

Another SIB message numbered as Out/184/02 again warned about
communal incidents if bodies were brought to Ahmedabad. “Communal
violence will occur in the city. So take preventive action.”  The
same message said that karsevaks had given explosive interviews to a
TV station at Godhra and had threatened to unleash violence against
the Muslims.  

At
1:51 hours and again at 1:59 hours on the 28th February
there were panic messages by wireless police vans positioned at Sola
Hospital demanding immediate protection from Special Reserve Police
platoons and the presence of DCP Zone 1.

Message at 2:44 hours on 28.2.2002: the motor cavalcade has reached
Sola Civil Hospital.


Page No. 5790 of Annexure IV, File XIV reveals that at 04:00 am

a
mob comprising of 3,000 swayamsevaks, that is the members of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had already gathered at the Civil
Sola Hospital.

At
7.14 a.m. the PCR van again informs the Police Control Room that a
large mob had assembled at the hospital. (Page 5796 of
Annexure IV, File XIV of the documents).

Again, another message three minutes later at 7:17 a.m. (Page
5797 of
Annexure IV, File XIV of the documents) says
that a mob of 500 people was holding up the traffic.

Ten bodies were
taken to Ramol, an area near Naroda and a massive funeral rally of
over 5,000-6,000 mourners took the bodies to Hatkeshwar crematorium
in the afternoon.

At 11:55 am a PCR
message is sent out saying that the Hindu mob had become violent and
had set a vehicle on fire and was indulging in arson on the highway.

Message at 11.55 a.m. on 28.2.2002 (Page No. 6162 Annexure
IV File XV)
saying that “Sayyed Saheb, the Protocol Officer had
informed Sola-1 that riots have started at Sola civil hospital at
the High Court where the dead bodies were brought.”

Again, there is another message with no indication of time (Page
No..6172 of 28.2.2002) that states that the officers and
employees of the hospital had been surrounded by a 500 strong mob
and they could not come out”. The message also made a demand for
more security for the civil hospital at Sola.


Annexure IV File XIV- Message

No.
5907 and 5925 at 11:58 a.m. on 28.2.2002
shows that when 10 dead
bodies were taken from Ramol Jantanagar to the Hatkeshwar cremation
ground, a crowd of 5,000-6,000 persons accompanied this procession.

On
the morning of 28.2.2002, a SIB message (on page 258 of Annexure III
File XIX, message No. Com/538/28/2/02) says that a funeral
procession was allowed to take place at Khedbrahma, a town in
Sabarkantha district. The message adds that soon after the funeral
procession 2 Muslims on their way to Khedbrahma were stabbed and the
situation had become very tense.

The
subsequent message at page No. 262 of the same file (Annexure III
File XIX)
mentions that 150 Bajrang Dal workers were on their
way from Ayodhya to Khedbrahma.

Another message at page 254 (Annexure III file XIX) –
Com/574/2002 sent out at 15.32 p.m. on 28.2.2002 states that one
more victim of the tragic train burning at Godhra, Babubhai
Harjibhai Patel, resident at Vaghrol, Tal. Vadali in Sabarkantha was
brought back and a funeral procession was organised in the town.


Warnings about the
deliberate mobilization

At page 365 of
Annexure III File XXI( D-166)
message No. 73/02 dated
28.2.2002 sent by the ACP(Intelligence) Surat Region to State
Intelligence Bureau Headquarters at Gandhinagar, says that between
9-10 a.m. on the morning of 28.2.2002, a meeting was held at Sardar
Chowk in Vapi Town where Dinesh Kumar Behri of VHP and Acharya 
Brahmbatt of Bajrang Dal , Jawahar Desai of BJP and Vinod Chowdhary
of RSS made inflammatory speeches regarding the incident at Godhra
and called upon the Hindus to unite.  

Another message at
page 188 in Annexure III, File XVIII sent at 20:38 hours on the day
of the Godhra train burning tragedy, i.e., 27.2.2002, mentions the
following: “Dilip Trivedi, the General Secretary of VHP and Joint
Secretary Dr. Jaideep Patel and Kaushik Mehta in a Joint Statement
issued by them have declared that innocent Ram BhattÂ’s have been
attacked and hence Gujarat Bandh has been declared. They have also
stated that the attack on the Ramsevaks returning from Ayodhya was
pre-planned by the Muslims. Innocent ladies were molested and
compartments were set on fire and Ramsevaks were burnt alive.”  

The joint statement
issued by the three senior-most office bearers of Gujarat VHPÂ’s unit
was clearly designed to stoke communal passion. A reasonable
response would have been an immediate government clampdown on such
public utterances and if required putting all these trouble makers
under preventive detention.  But no such action was taken. The VHP
called for a bandh on the 28th February and the BJP, the
ruling party, openly supported the bandh call. The State, instead of
clamping down on the bandh call, gave the VHP leaders and its cadres
a free reign and a license to kill. 


At page 345, the
message titled Vardhi No. 24 contained in Annexure III File XIX
dated 27.2.2002

sent from D.O., Ahmedabad to the Intelligence Office at Virangam (Virangam
is in Ahmedabad rural district) stated that 50 to 75 members of the
VHP and Bajrang Dal had gathered at Virangam town chali and in the
Golwada area and the situation was very tense.

Another message in
the same file, i.e., Annexure III, File XVIII (D-160) at Page No. 19
Message No. 531 ifrom SIB Police to KR Singh at 1810 hours on
27.2.2002 said that, “on 27.2.2002 at 4.30 p.m. when the train
arrived at the Ahmedabad Railway station, the kar sevaks were armed
with ‘dandas’ and shouting murderous slogans ‘khoon ka badla khoon’
and ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’.”
 

Fax Mes. D-1/  HA/
Jaher Sabha/ Junagadh/ 311/02 dated.27.2.02 at10.12 pm sent by PI,
CID, Int. Bhavnagar to IG, Guj. State IB, Gandhi Nagar said that
Sadhu Samaj president Gopalnandji gave an agitated speech at
Junagadh Kadva chowk, on dt.27.2.02 between19.30 to 21.00 hrs. The
message then goes on to name specific local VHP leaders and says
that they expressed their condolences to Kar Sevaks and then
delivered hate speeches and urged all Hindus to unite and told the
audience to chop the hands and legs of our enemies. They said in
their speech that the incident that occurred at Godhra in the
morning at 7.30a.m., yet there was no reaction from the Hindus which
was very unfortunate. “Muslims who live in India with sincerity and
patriotism, we donÂ’t have any agitation against them. But we have
objections against those who lived in India and favour Pakistan and
carried out activities against the country. Anti- national
activities are being done in Madrasas. We have objection against it.
We do not have any kind of objection against spiritual religious
education to the children. Pooja prathna at the temple and
pray in the Masjid but Pakistan Zindabad is not right. Above mention
ideas were expressed by them.” 

Fax Mes.
Com/HM/550/ 02 Dt.27.2.02 23:59 Out No.398 from ACP, Int. GÂ’nagar
Region to IG, Guj. State IB, Gandhi Nagar says that 50 Karsevaks
travelling by a special bus from Ahmedabad reached Modasa centre in
village Vadagam at Taluka Dhansura at around 18:30 pm on 27.2.02.
“They were received by a mob of 500 people and these kar sevaks
addressed the mob and told the people how the compartment of
Sabarmati Express was attacked. People present in the mob got
excited and at 21:30 p.m. people from around the village gathered
and the mob swelled to a huge size. To maintain law and order the
force was not sufficient and about 10 paan bidi shops were
set on fire. Vehicles like Jeep, Maruti and Ambassador were set on
fire. Vehicles and shops seem to belong to Muslims. One Yasinbhai
MultaniÂ’s shop at Kalol center TaKadi, Bavlu PS village Kalyanpur
was burnt down by the mob”. 

Throughout February
28, 2002 while fires were set all over Ahmedabad city, PCR records
show that repeated calls from different areas to the Fire Brigade
drew went answered.

Table of Phone
Records 

Call Type

Cell-No (Name)

Duration Secs

Date-Time

Dialed / Received No – Name


Outgoing


9825037439

A P
Patel


(Accused No 1, Mr Modi)

77


27.2.2002


09:39:38

 


9825023887

Mr
Jaideep Patel VHP General Secretary


(Accused No 21)


Outgoing


9825037439

A P
Patel


(Accused No 1, Mr Modi)

20


27.2.2002


09:41:39


9825023887

Mr
Jaideep Patel VHP General Secretary


(Accused No 21)

 The Protest Petition prays for the charge sheeting of all the
accused, a transfer of the further investigation to an independent
agency and an admitting of the Petition.

(Trustees, Citizens
for Justice and Peace)

I.M. Kadri
                              Nandan Maluste      
Cyrus Guzder                      Arvind Krishnaswamy               
Javed Akhtar
Alyque Padamsee              Anil Dharker
                                Ghulam Peshimam  
          
Rahul Bose                          Javed Anand
                               Teesta Setalvad
Cedric Prakash

 


*  The colour Maps
attached are annexed to Protest Petition


 

 


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