|
Nanavati report gives clean chit to Modi, sparks row
Thursday, September 25, 2008, (New Delhi)
The Godhra train burning has now re-ignited a fresh political controversy. The latest provocation is the tabling of part one of the report by the Nanavati Commission set up by the Modi government to investigate the train burning and the riots.
The first part of the report, which only deals with the train burning, validates the stand of the Modi government that Godhra was a conspiracy hatched by the locals of Godhra to target kar sevaks and that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his government had no role to play in
Godhra.
Justice Nanavati has said that there is absolutely no evidence to show that either the chief minister or his council of ministers or police officers played any role in the Godhra incident.
But in what has only stoked the political flames, the report also exonerates the chief minister and his team for their role in the riots that followed, a premonition of what is to come in the second part of the report.
"There was no lapse on their part in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of the communal riots," said the report.
The Opposition, which walked out of the Gujarat Assembly, has said that the report only confirms their findings that the Nanavati Commission was politically biased.
"The commission's findings seem to be based almost verbatim on the findings of the special investigating team constituted by Narendra Modi on Godhra," said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
The commission says that the incident was fallout of a conspiracy hatched by a group of locals in Godhra including Maulana Umarji, Razzak Kurkur and Salim Panwala.
It says that Shaukat Lalu and Mohammad Latika had forcibly opened the sliding door connecting S6 and S7 coaches and poured petrol on the floor while Hasan Lalu had thrown the burning rags into the coach. The conspirators wanted to target the kar sevaks to disturb communal peace and amity.
However, many questions remain on the commission's findings.
In giving the government a clean chit, the commission says that there was no prior intelligence on the return of the kar sevaks from Ayodhya. So how did the conspirators know when the kar sevaks would arrive?
Though the part one of the Nanavati report was supposed to deal with the Godhra incident, but it has also given clean chit to Narendra Modi for handling the riots. The critics say that there is very little riot victims could hope from second part of the report supposed to be submitted by December end.
|
|
