Mission Assassination
Hardnews' Amit Sengupta on the implications of Ishrat's murder:
"...Modi's ambitions have been repeatedly thwarted by the facts of the legacy he has left behind in polarised Gujarat, where cases of massacres keep arriving like a dark shadow of blood-soaked truth, even while the screams and torture of victims have not really been completely eliminated from the political unconscious.
"...Modi's ambitions have been repeatedly thwarted by the facts of the legacy he has left behind in polarised Gujarat, where cases of massacres keep arriving like a dark shadow of blood-soaked truth, even while the screams and torture of victims have not really been completely eliminated from the political unconscious.
From Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society to Panchmahal, Sardarpura, Dahod and Best Bakery in Vadodra; from Bilquis Bano to Zaheera Sheikh and Zakia Jaffrey, it's like a grotesque serial of organised, evidenced injustice, scripted by a state-sponsored massacre, which comes back, which will keep returning, to haunt Modi, his former mentor, LK Advani, the RSS and BJP for all times to come. The organised BJP-VHP-Bajrang Dal gangs, led by the likes of Jaideep Patel, Babu Bajrangi, Mayaben Kodnani, among others, with ministers actually calling the shots from police control rooms, as phone records show, are facts documented extensively across the Indian media, civil liberty groups and high profile tribunals led by former judges.
The claim of IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, that in a closed door meeting with top officials, hours before the massacres began on February 28, 2002, Modi gave clear instructions to let the mobs vent their anger, has been reported in other places too, including in a people's tribunal formed by former Supreme Court and high court judges, and eminent persons like Aruna Roy. Everything was executed, designed and planned with meticulous precision as the wave of carnage ravaged Gujarat's secular fabric. Indeed, after the killings in Godhra, there was no need to bring the dead bodies to Ahmedabad. This was done precisely to inflame passions.
Clearly, the Gujarat carnage will chase Modi like a bloody ghost till the day justice is done. In normal circumstances, he should have taken moral responsibility and quit. But why would a man who reaps the harvest of a carnage, and positions himself on this grotesque realism, ever succumb to basic human values of decency, compassion and self-introspection?..
The Haren Pandya murder case is also not an open and shut case. His father had directly accused Modi of the killing. Sanjiv Bhatt's testimony and reported stories of Tulsiram being used for dubious causes are also doing the rounds. They will open a new can of worms for Modi.
Indeed, if the RSS and BJP have any respect for constitutional and ethical values, they should sack Modi immediately. Because this man will never resign. Even as the wheels of injustice he has unleashed will come to haunt him every day of his life. .. " Read the full article: http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2011/11/4222