Islamabad: Day after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was given clean chit by country’s supreme court, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, has said that Modi has endured silently for 19 years. Both Modi and Shah are seen as the main culprits of 2002 Gujarat massacre of muslims.
“Modi ji set an example, showing how Constitution can be honoured. He was questioned but nobody staged dharna & workers didn’t come to stand in solidarity with him…If those who levelled allegations have a conscience, they should apologise,” Shah said while talking to Indian news agency ANI.
Zakia is the widow of Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who along with 68 others was killed inside the gated Gulberg Society, a lower-middle-class Muslim neighbourhood in Chamanpura, Ahmedabad, a day after the 2002 Godhra riots in Gujarat. Ehsan became president of Congress’ Ahmedabad branch in 1972. He was elected MP for Ahmedabad in 1977.
Indian Express quoted Tanveer Jafri, the son of the Gulberg society massacre survivor Zakia Jafri, who expressed disappointment Friday with the Supreme Court verdict that upheld the clean chit to the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and 63 others in the 2002 riots.
The anti muslim progrom in Gujarat in 2002 was triggered by a fire incident in a train in which 58 Hindu pilgrims karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, were charred to death. Muslims were blamed for the incident and rightwing Hindu’s created an atmosphere to slug out anger on Muslim minority.
The Concerned Citizens Tribunal Report, estimated that as many as 1,926 may have been killed. Other sources estimated death tolls in excess of 2,000. Many brutal killings and rapes were reported on as well as widespread looting and destruction of property.
Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat and later Prime Minister of India, was accused of condoning the violence, as were police and government officials who allegedly directed the rioters and gave lists of Muslim-owned properties to them.
Modi could not stand to question about the Gujarat case by the veteran Indian journalist Karan Thapar in his famous interview. Modi left the interview half way when questioned about the government being hand in glove in the brutal massacre of Muslims.
For a long period of time Modi was banned from entering the US for his role in the killing of Muslims.
Since Modi took over India and his party BJP backed by right wing hindu group RSS, they have lead a muslim centric lynching progrom to road side executions.
