Modi’s murderous minister

On August 29, for the first time in India, a sitting MLA, was found to have instigated violence in Gujarat in 2002.

What can be said of civil society in Gujarat when its minister for women development and child welfare is convicted of rioting against women and children?

On August 29, for the first time in India, a sitting MLA (what is called MPA in Pakistan) was found to have instigated violence in the worst of the 2002 incidents.

Twelve people testified to minister Maya Kodnani assisting and egging on the rioters in the Ahmedabad suburb of Naroda Patiya. A total of 96 Muslims were killed that night, 34 children including a newborn, 32 women and 30 men. Kodnani supplied the killers with kerosene and swords, according to testimony. Judge Jyotsna Yagnik found 32 people guilty of the massacre. The fearsome Babu ‘Bajrangi’, the man accused of forcibly undoing marriages of Hindu girls to Muslim boys, has also been convicted in the case.

Kodnani, a Sindhi, whose family migrated at Partition, was an MLA when she participated in the violence and, despite the grave allegations against her, was made minister by Narendra Modi later. When she was charge-sheeted by an independent agency, she was dropped as minister but retained her seat as MLA. She is a qualified doctor, a gynaecologist, showing that higher education is no barrier to bigotry.

Though she denied being present at Naroda Patiya when the killings happened, Kodnani was proved to be there by her cell phone records. These had been gathered and submitted by an exceptional officer in the Gujarat police force. Shamefully, that officer, Rahul Sharma, from the elite Indian Police Service, is being tried by Modi’s government for misconduct. His crime was to have taken the initiative to get these phone records from the various cell phone companies and hand them over to independent investigators instead of the state. I think he did the right thing because under Modi (who was and remains the state’s home minister) investigations were so sloppy that the Supreme Court brought in an outside agency to take over. Kodnani’s conviction is because of that outside investigation team and not through the work of Modi’s government.

The phone records Sharma collected showed both Kodnani and Bajrangi in areas where they claimed not to be. They also show that the then deputy home minister, Gordhan Zadhafiya, was in the police control room. He has been accused of directing the violence and ordering the police to go easy on the rioters, though he also denied being there. Zadhafiya, who like Bajrangi is from the peasant Patel community, is today a rebel against Modi’s government.

The cell phone records indicate that Modi’s office was in touch with the rioters. Officers in the CMO — as the office is called — who phoned those now convicted of rioting, include Tanmay Mehta, Sanjay Bhavsar and Anil Mukim. When I visited Modi’s office a couple of years ago, I remember Bhavsar and Mukim being there. The records also indicate that phone conversations happened from the chief minister’s residence.

Modi speaks often about the inability of the Congress to protect India’s citizens from terrorist violence. He will not be able to deflect the truth that his own minister was responsible for the killing of Gujaratis easily. Modi’s record at protecting his citizens has been poor. Another of his deputy home ministers, Amit Shah, is barred from entering Gujarat today because of the charges he faces. Modi’s anti-terrorism force chief, DG Vanzara, is in jail for murder, also the result of an independent investigation.

It is astonishing, given the failures, that Modi continues to keep the portfolio of the home ministry. He has publicly attacked Teesta Setalvad, the Gujarati activist whose persistence has been crucial in bringing about all these convictions. But it is true that Gujaratis like me, who are still ashamed for our conduct of 10 years ago, are today proud of her and what she has achieved.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2012.