SIT report flays Modi for role in Gujarat riots

Despite Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's reputation as an able administrator, the taint of the anti-Muslim riots in the state just won't go away.

In a serious blow to his image, the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) has indicted him on over a dozen counts for complicity in the 2002 riots.

The confidential report of the SIT, which has been reproduced extensively by Tehelka magazine, has upheld many of the complaints lodged against Modi and his administration by Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri, who was killed in the riots.

The SIT submitted its 600-page report to the Supreme Court in May 2010 after it had, among other things, questioned Modi for 10 hours. Its damaging observations against Modi are despite the SIT's admission that several witnesses had declined to testify. Moreover, it clarifies that this was merely a preliminary enquiry and not a criminal investigation under the law.

The inquiry was carried out by former Central Bureau of Investigation officer A K Malhotra under the supervision of SIT chairman K Raghavan. Malhotra said, "The chief minister had tried to water down the seriousness of the situation at Gulbarg Society, Naroda Patia and other places by saying that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

"His implied justification of the killings of innocent members of the minority community, read together with an absence of a strong condemnation of the violence that followed Godhra (train burning incident), suggest a partisan stance at a critical juncture when the state had been badly disturbed by communal violence."