Citizens for Justice and Peace

Many cannards were spread (prematurely) and without checking the facts on the ground by counsel for the Gujarat government in the Hon. Supreme Court Mukul Rohatgi (which was expected and predictable) but which were swallowed hook line and sinker by newspapers and columnists which was regrettable. Especially given the media's overall role that has been extremely positive in keeping the horrors of the Gujarat Carnage alive in the public mind...

Ahmedabad: The chilling story of Kausar Bano was one of the worst that came out of the Gujarat riots.

It is said that the womb of the pregnant woman was slit apart, the foetus taken out with a sword, cut into pieces and burnt alive.

But earlier this month, a government doctor said it's all lies, that her body bore no injury marks and her foetus intact when the post-mortem was conducted.

Now, riot survivors have filed an application challenging that. One riots survivor claims it all happened before her own eyes.

"They removed her baby from her stomach and held at a sword's edge. And then they burnt her body completely. How come the doctor can say that he conducted a post-mortem on Kausar Bano's body," said a riots survivor Naroda Patiya.

The applicants have submitted photographs of badly charred bodies to drive home the point that there was no way Kausar's body could have been identified.

Raju Shaikh, advocate for victims said, "the post-mortem was originally conducted on an unidentified body. How was Kausar Bano's name given to it ? Who identified it and how? Even SIT has not said that it was Kausar Bano's body."

Victims are also asking why it took over eight years for a doctor to say that Kausar Bano's body bore no external injury marks.

The Times of India
Gujarat Edition 30/03/10

How did doc identify Kausar’s burnt body, asks riot witness

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad: The controversy about the killing of eight-monthpregnant Kausar Bano in Naroda Patia massacre does not seem to die. A witness told the court on Monday that it was additional commissioner of police of crime branch who identified the post mortem report of 2002 as that of Kausar Bano in August 2004.
    After four eyewitnesses deposed before the special court about how mobs had slit Kausar’s womb and flung the foetus before killing her, civil surgeon Dr JS Kanoria, who conducted the postmortem deposed that he found the foetus in the belly only. Dr Kanoria’s statement and photocopy of the autopsy report contradicted the version of witnesses as well as claims made by main accused Babu Bajrangi on Tehelka sting tapes.
    An eyewitness to the incident, Dildar Saiyed has sought further probe in this case and raised critical questions about the doctor’s statement. In his application, Saiyed asked how did Dr Kanoria know this was Kausar when it was unidentified at the time of postmortem on March 2, 2002. It was two years later that the crime branch officer said this was Kausar Bano Khaliq Noormohammed Shaikh. “On what basis, the additional police commissioner made this change in the PM note of 575-02? These facts have not come on record during investigation. Hence, detailed probe is necessary in this direction because the bodies were so badly burnt that it was impossible to identify them,” Saiyed argued in his application. Interestingly, during his deposition, Dr Kanoria told the court that he could not trace original documents of Kausar Bano’s postmortem from Civil Hospital.
    Investigating officer VV Chaudhary’s revelation on Monday before the court also disputed some heroics described unknowingly by Bajrangi before Tehelka. Saiyed sought probe on two specific claims made by Bajrangi — murders of a journalist at Naroda Patia by rioting mob on February 28, 2008 and of a boy named Salim.

One of the interesting fallouts of the battle for justice and reparation for the victim survivors of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 has been the blatant attempts by stooges fo the state government like its counsel in the Supreme Court and others to deliberately defame those human rights defenders and organizations who have stuck it out for the past eight years and assisted eye-witnesses to depose, without fear or favour to ensure that justice is done. We have consistently been victim of this vicious defamation drive. Few of those who told these stories in 2002-2003 have however come to the rescue.

Woefully, unmindful of the kind of articles carried by their own publications during the traumatic period of 2002, mainstream Indian newspapers and even the hysterical news anchors of our “national” television channels have echoed the vilification drive launched by the Gujarat state, never once looking back, over their shoulder into their own archives where correspondent after correspondent have used space telling these very horror stories.

A prime example of this abication of media responsibility is the case of Kauserbano, a victim of murder at Naroda Patia, accounts of eye witnesses at the time describing how a bloodthirsty mob slit open her womb ( carrying a foetus almost nine months old), swirled it on a ssword before burning mother and child alive. Not only did The Times of India and The Indian Express apart from the Statesman and The Deccan Herald extensively report the narrative in print, but Women’s Visiting teams including one headed by former chairperson of the National Commission of Women wrote of it extensively. Feminists from Mumbai assisted women record their affidavits before the official Nanavati Shah Commission and Kauserbano’s sad tale was a significant part of the narrative.

Now, today when the doctor who did the post mortem denies that such an incident took place, do not one and all who told this story in those days after 2002 owe something to the memory of Kauserbano? Why are they all silent?