Aarefa Johari - 'Police was definitely involved, but got away': Survivors and activists rue Gulberg verdict
A special court in
Ahmedabad has ruled out the possibility of conspiracy in the Gulberg Society
massacre of 2002, a move that has come as a major disappointment for
riot-survivors and their supporters. The court pronounced its much-anticipated verdict in the Gulberg
massacre case – the second-last of the nine Gujarat riots cases of 2002 still
under trial – on Thursday morning, 14 years after a mob of Hindu rioters
attacked residents of Gulberg Society, a Muslim-dominated housing complex in
Ahmedabad and burnt it down. The court convicted 24 of the 66 accused and
acquitted 36 of them. Six of the accused died during the course of the six-year
trial.
Those convicted
include Atul Vaidya, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader, while those acquitted
include Bharatiya Janata Party corporator Bipin Patel and KG Erda, inspector of
the local Meghaninagar police station. Most significantly, however, the judge,
PB Desai ruled out any charges of criminal conspiracy behind the Gulberg
Society attacks, effectively indicating that the massacre of 69 residents was
not planned.
“I am satisfied that
24 people have been convicted after 14 years, including powerful Hindutva
leaders like Atul Vaidya and Bharat Taili,” said Teesta Setalvad, founder of
Citizens for Justice and Peace, the organisation that had taken the Gulberg
case to court on behalf of the survivors. “But I am bewildered that the judge
has not accepted charges of conspiracy. The 2012 judgement in the Naroda Patiya
case ruled that there was definitely a wider conspiracy behind the attacks. We
will now definitely exercise our legal right to appeal this judgement.”
The Gulberg case
When Gulberg Society
was attacked on February 28, 2002, at least 69 people died – including Congress
parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri – and 31 people were declared missing. According to
witnesses and survivors, the mob that gathered outside the society with swords
and inflammables, and later attacked the residents, consisted of members of the
Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Witnesses have alleged that the local
police was complicit in the attacks, included police inspector KG Erda who has
now been acquitted.
Numerous police
complaints were registered after the incident, but the National Human Rights
Commission consistently claimed that the complaints lacked credibility. In
2008, following allegations of biased investigations, the Supreme Court
constituted a Special Investigation Team to look into the Gulberg Society case
as well as the other eight riots cases.
The SIT report,
submitted to the apex court in 2010, named 66 accused in the Gulberg case. In general,
across all nine cases, the SIT’s investigations have been heavily criticised by
activists and survivors for being inadequate and giving a clean chit to
powerful government officials, including former Gujarat chief minister Narendra
Modi.
‘Willing to take
him to the Supreme Court’
Rupa Mody, one of the
338 witnesses to testify in the case, is both relieved and disappointed by the
court’s verdict. Mody’s 14-year-old son Azhar went missing during the Gulberg
carnage and the 2007 film Parzania is based on her ordeal and
failed attempts to find him.
“It is good to know
that 24 accused have been convicted, but honestly I expected the number to be
at least 30, considering so many of us saw who was involved and provided our
testimonies,” said Mody, who is particularly upset that Erda has been let off.
“Erda knew that Bharat Taili and others were perpetrators of the attacks – he
told me so himself. He had support from the government too. And under Erda, the
police also forged my signature on a statement given in July 2002. I have
identified him, and I am willing to take him to the Supreme Court.”
Nirjhari Sinha,
founder of Gujarat-based non-profit group Jan Sangharsh Manch, is also unhappy
with the court’s judgement. “I never expected this to be a trend-setting
verdict because the SIT’s investigation itself was never satisfactory,” said
Sinha. “As expected, the less powerful accused have been convicted and the big
names, those who held the remote control, have been acquitted. The police was
definitely complicit but all police officials managed to get away.”
Final solution
Witness accounts of
police complicity and the involvement of Hindutva leaders are also echoed in
this chilling excerpt from Final Solution, a 2004 documentary by
filmmaker Rakesh Sharma, who has interviewed Gulberg Society survivors multiple
times since 2002. Here, survivors talk about Congress MP Ehsan Jafri's
desperate attempts to get help from chief minister Modi as residents took
refuge from the mobs in his house. They also talk about how the police refused
to send for help when rioters began to burn men, women and children alive.
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