‘Gujrat pogrom was planned at top level’

ISLAMABAD—A sting operation carried out by Tehelka has claimed that mass murder of Muslims in 2002 riots in Gujarat had been craftily planned and executed by top functionaries of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal in league with the Chief Minister Narindra Modi and his ministers.
Tehelka tapes have shown Babu Bajrangi, currently a member of Shiv Sena, admitting that he and his men killed 91 Muslim men and women in Naroda Patiya in the Godhra riots, KMS reported.
“In my FIR, it is written that I ripped open a pregnant women’s stomach. We showed the Muslims what we are capable of,” he told an undercover reporter. The tapes show Bajrangi claiming that he phoned thethen Home Minister Gordhan Zadaphiya to tell him aboutthe killings and sort out the matter.
“He just asked me flee from Gujarat,” says Bajrangi.Bajrangi claims that he had already told the Muslim leaders that his men will kill four times the number of
Muslims in comparison to the lives lost in the Godhra Sabarmati train fire incident. Addressing a news conference Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal said that his team had covertly caught on camera VHP leaders acknowledging that they killed Muslims in the state with Modi’s ‘’approval.’’
A BJP MLA is saying on tape that he was present inthe meeting in which Chief Minister Narendra Modi gavethem three days to do whatever they wanted.
In another incriminating disclosure, the leadersconfessed that bombs were manufactured in factories ownedby senior Bajrang Dal and VHP activists. “I started making country-made bombs and revolvers in my factory,” said Harish Bhatt, a BJP MLA.
“We also ordered three truckloads of swords fromPunjab.”In a further shocking admission, he said that‘even rocket launchers were made by me’.
Dhawal Jayanti Patel of the VHP claims on tape thatexplosives and bombs were made using dynamite and RDXbased powder. Asked about how they managed to evade the police, Dhawal Patel said, “All we had to say was Jai Shri Ram and they knew that we were Modi’s men.
“ The two also claimed that they transported thesecountry-made bombs to other parts of Gujarat.The tapes also show graphic accounts from the conspirators and rioters on how Gujarat Police colluded with them. They further show an elaborate subversion to savethe accused. Two public prosecutors admitted on Tehelka tapes how contrary to their public office, they are secretly defending the “Hindu accused”.
The undercover investigations have also caught police witnesses admitting that they have given fake testimonies against Muslims in Godhra.
A crucial police witness, a petrol pump employee whotold court that he had sold 140 litres of petrol to theaccused on the evening of the Sabarmati incident_admits to the undercover reporter that he had his colleagues were paid Rs. 50,000 each by Noel Parmar, the chief investigating officer in Godhra case.
Two BJP members, who on court records areeyewitnesses, admit that they were not even at Godhra station that day.
The tapes also have a first hand account of theGulbarga Society massacre where former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was hacked to death limb-by-limb and then burnThousands of Muslims held a rally in India’s financial capital on Thursday demanding justice for victims of communal riots that left hundreds dead in 1993 and led to the country’s worst bombings in retaliation.
Justice for the victims of the bombings was delivered in August after 14 years, with the conviction of 100 people, mostly Muslims. But those responsible for the deadly riots have still to be brought to book.
The riots killed around 900 people, two thirds of them Muslims. On Thursday, more than 20,000 Muslims, many of them victims of the riots, demanded that the recommendations of a judicial commission that investigated the carnage be implemented.ed.—Agencies