The Hindu : BJP leaders led violent mobs, victims tell inquiry panel

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 01, 2003

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BJP leaders led violent mobs, victims tell inquiry panel

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD Sept. 30. The names of several leaders of the BJP and other Sangh outfits for leading violent mobs which attacked minority settlements in the Naroda-Patiya locality in Ahmedabad during the communal riots last year again figured before the Nanavati-Shah inquiry commission here today.

Deposing before the commission, Faridabanu, one of the victims of the attack, named the BJP MLA and party city unit president, Mayaben Kodnani, for leading the mob attack.

She also named some other Sangh Parivar leaders, including Babu Bajrangi, the city unit chief of the Bajrang Dal, and the VHP leaders, Kishan Korani and Bipin Autowala, to be also among those instigating the mob to attack the minorities on February 28, last year, a day after the Godhra train carnage.

Justice G.T. Nanavati and Justice K.G. Shah, constituting the two-man judicial inquiry commission probing into the Godhra train carnage and the post-Godhra communal riots in Gujarat, today resumed public hearing on the incidents in Naroda-Patiya to enable the witnesses and victims, who could not be accommodated during the hearing of Naroda-Patiya last month, to depose before it.

But unlike the rush of the witnesses during the earlier hearing, only eight persons, most of them belonging to the majority community, turned up for deposition before the commission today.

The hearing for the day folded up in the pre-lunch session for lack of witnesses to depose.

Kodnani's name had figured during the hearing last month also when several Muslim victims had alleged her to be leading the mob to attack the Muslim houses while some of her supporters had claimed before the commission that on the fateful day she was attending the Assembly session in Gandhinagar and was pre-occupied with other activities and at no time had come to Naroda-Patiya on that day.

But Faridabanu insisted that she had seen Kodnani in the crowd instigating the mob to attack Muslims and was also accompanied by other Sangh Parivar leaders. She also alleged that the police present in Naroda remained inactive and did little to protect the Muslims in the face of the mob attack.

Asked by the government pleader, Arvind Pandya, why in her statement to the police recorded five months after the incident she did not mention the names of BJP and Sangh leaders, Faridabanu maintained that she did tell those names but the police might had deliberately omitted from her statement.

The depositions before the commission by and large followed the same pattern as during the previous hearing with some Hindu witnesses repeating the same story of a mini truck coming from a lane adjacent to the Noorani mosque having crushed a Hindu boy which they claimed had sparked off the trouble in the locality.

It was not clear why the turnout remained poor today but convener of one non-government organisation which was mobilising the minority victims in Naroda-Patiya and Gulmarg Society to depose before the commission said the minorities felt unsafe because of what happened during the hearing last time when some Parivar activists had threatened and manhandled some of the witnesses coming to appear before the commission.

Sheba George of Sahkar said the NGOs had asked for exclusive days for deposing before the commission when no one else would be allowed to remain present and was waiting for the commission to grant its request.

Meanwhile, the Pradesh Congress Committee in a memorandum to the Governor, Kaislashpati Mishra, demanding an impartial inquiry into various omissions and commissions of the Narendra Modi Government in the State also referred to the alleged threats to the minorities.

The memorandum has been signed among others by the PCC president, Shankarsinh Waghela, and the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Amarsinh Chaudhary. It claimed that the minorities were "under threats'' from the Modi administration and had been told to stay away from inquiry commission or registering police complaints unless they wanted to be booked under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and remained behind bars without any trial.

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