Fact, Fiction and Narendra Modi: why a pro Modi journalist will not now be voting for him

by Guest Fri Mar 07, 2014 7:38 am

http://wap.business-standard.com/article/opinion/rahul-jacob-fact-fiction-and-narendra-modi-114030501137_1.html

by Guest Fri Mar 07, 2014 7:39 am

Even in a nation known for illogical bureaucratic communication, the letter written the night of February 27, 2002 by the revenue officer in Godhra is bewildering. It concerns the departure of "five trucks despatched here with, which may be accepted". The trucks were carrying 54 dead bodies of the victims of the Godhra train tragedy, which were handed over neither to their families nor to a government hospital mortuary as the law or even common sense would have dictated, but to Jaydeep Patel, the then general secretary of the Gujarat unit of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). A parade with bodies of the victims fanned the flames of the riots that broke out in Ahmedabad the following day.

As Manoj Mitta, the author of a new book on the riot of 2002, The Fiction of Fact-finding: Modi and Godhra, observes, "If there was any exceptional reason to depart from the norm [of handing over a dead body to a legal heir or guardian], the letter should have disclosed it." The brief letter offers none.

When Narendra Modi was asked by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in 2010 whether Mr Patel had spoken to him about the dead bodies, he replied that he did not remember meeting him that fateful night when he visited Godhra and that he did "not know the details as to how and when the bodies reached Ahmedabad".
Mr Mitta's book quotes the district magistrate of Godhra at the time, who has a different version of events. She recalls Mr Modi being in the meeting at her office in the Collectorate during which the "unanimous decision" to send the bodies to Ahmedabad the same night was made. Among the others present, in the district magistrate's version of events, was "one Shri Jaydeep Patel, a VHP activist".

Fact, Fiction and Narendra Modi: why a pro Modi journalist will not now be voting for him

Fact, Fiction and Narendra Modi: why a pro Modi journalist will not now be voting for him

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