Probe clears Narendra Modi over anti-Muslim riots

By
fraaz
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8
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An investigation team appointed by India’s Supreme Court has found no evidence against Gujarat’s chief minister over deadly anti-Muslim riots in the state a decade ago, a court said Tuesday.
Narendra Modi had been accused by rights groups of having turned a blind eye to the violence that swept the state in 2002 claiming as many as 2,000 lives, and of failing to bring to justice the perpetrators of the killings.
“According to the Special Investigation Team, no offence has been established against” Modi or any of the 57 others listed in the complaint, the magisterial court said, reported by the Press Trust of India. The announcement was a boost for Modi, a prominent member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and seen as a potential candidate to be India’s prime minister in the 2014 general elections. The complaint had been filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of a former Congress Muslim lawmaker, Eshan Jafri, who was burnt to death along with 68 other people by a mob in a housing colony in Gujarat.
Zakia Jafri had filed a complaint against Modi, his ministerial colleagues, top police officials and members of the BJP, accusing them of conspiracy in the riots and the Supreme Court ordered an inquiry into the allegations. Modi’s lawyer called the allegations against his client “absurd.”
The decision by the Special Investigation Team came as Modi is set to run for a fourth term in office in elections in the western state, known as one of India’s most industrialised, due to be held later this year. The decision came after an Indian court convicted 23 people on Monday over the massacre of nearly two dozen Muslims during the riots in Gujarat state.
Some 31 Muslims were found guilty last year on murder and conspiracy charges for the train attack in which 59 Hindu devotees were killed that sparked the anti-Muslim riots.
Hindu mobs seeking revenge rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods in several cities across Gujarat during three days of bloodshed that witnessed some of India’s worst religious violence since independence from Britain in 1947.
Modi got another boost last year when a US Congressional research paper hailed his governance track record and called him the “likely” prime ministerial candidate for the BJP in the 2014 national elections.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. This article is full of factual errors. Gujarat riots of 2002 were not the worst ever violence in Independent India. theth

  2. This article is full of factual errors. Gujarat riots of 2002 were not the worst ever religious violence in independent India. 1984 anti-Sikh massacre was the worst ever riots happened after 1947. Seconly not 2000 people were not killed during riots. As per figures given by the Union Minister of State for Home Shriprakash Jaiswal, who belongs to the Congress Party, in Parliament on 11 May 2005, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed in the riots, after Muslims burnt 59 Hindu pilgrims alive. This was in a WRITTEN REPLY to a question asked by a Congress member on the religion wise casualties in Gujarat after Godhra. The UPA government gives these figures, and hence they themselves may be inflated.

  3. I am unable to understand the reason for all this blood shed and the games Played afterwards by all the politicians. They make people forget the blunders and harp on other issueses.

  5. @pliskan…

    the article says "some of India’s worst religious violence since independence from Britain in 1947…" … the 1984 anti-sikh riots were not strictly on religious grounds… any how now i would like to ask the indians and pakistani so-called liberals who does not get tired of evidence and hafiz saeed… the court set all 57 accused free !!!! but since we suspect all of them to be guilty along with advani and vajpayee..so can you hand them to us? no… the world does not work like this… the courts are there to examine the evidence and decide…now uncle Sam should announce a 10 million bounty on the head of modi so that anybody who has witness comes forward!

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