Skip to main content

Modi "decided" to bring dead bodies from Godhra to Ahmedabad, triggering 2002 riots: Gujarat bureaucrat

Rana Ayyub
A book by a well-known investigative journalist has claimed that a top Gujarat bureaucrat had told her during a sting operation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as Gujarat chief minister, had made the “decision” of bringing 58 dead bodies, charred to death in the S-6 Sabarmati Express coach, from Godhra to Ahmedabad on February 27, 2002, triggering the riots in which at least 1,000 people died.
Pointing out that this gave the immediate reason for the riots to spread, the bureaucrat told journalist Rana Ayyub, who posed as Maithili Tyagi from the prestigious American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles for the sting: “See, bringing the bodies to Ahmedabad flared up the whole thing but he was the one who took the decision”.
The sensational revelation has been made in “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover-Up”, already being described as “a racy memoir of reporting undercover in Modi’s Gujarat.” Former editor of the periodical“Tehelka”, Ayyub is currently an independent investigative journalist.
Ayyub reveals, through twitter, that “very few editors in this country can deny that they refused to publish the transcripts, citing political pressure”, adding, ‘Gujarat Files’ has been “self-published by me after topmost publishers eased out citing political pressure.” 
The book, to be officially released in Delhi on May 27, is available on Kindle, and can be ordered from Amazon and Flipkart. 
Calling it “one of d biggest exposes on the Modi-Amit Shah dispensation”, Ayyub denies her book has Congress support. “All those calling ‘Gujarat Files’ a Congress book, please read and find out how the book has faced censorship since 2012 ( UPA regime).”
The bureaucrat, a former home secretary, told Ayyub that Modi was meticulous enough not to ask anyone to “go slow” on controlling 2002 riots. “He would never do that. He would also never write anything on paper. He had his people and through them the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and then through them trickle down through informal channels to the lower-rung police inspectors”, the bureaucrat has been quoted as saying.
Referring to the controversial meeting on February 27, 2002 evening, where Modi reportedly asked officials to “go slow”, the bureaucrat told the sting, “He would not say that in the meeting. He would say that to his men. He would convey to the VHP and then to officers.”
Narrating what made her resort to sting, Ayyub says, before she chose the new role, she, with the “able help from human rights activists and officers” made “one of the most sensational exposés of the year: The call records of the then Minister of State for Home Affairs, Amit Shah, and top officers during the course of encounters” in Gujarat.
“The exposé created ripples in the political fraternity”, says Ayyub, adding, “Within weeks of the exposé, the CBI arrested Amit Shah, the first serving Home Minister in the history of independent India to be arrested. It became an overnight sensation.”
Pointing out how this changed her life, too, Ayyub says, while she stayed in a reasonably good hotel in a Muslim-dominated area till then, a few days after the exposé, her phone received a text from an unknown number which read, “We know where you are”.
This led her to change her accommodation “every third day, from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) campus in Ahmedabad to guesthouses, hostels, and gymkhanas”, Ayyub notes, adding, “I had begun to operate like a fugitive.”
At this point, Ayyub says, she also decided to bring out the truth behind the riots and fake encounters to political assassinations, many an inconvenient truth was waiting to come out, and to prove this, she made the decision that changed her life, professionally and personally.
To make sting operations, she says, “Rana Ayyub had to give way to Maithili Tyagi, a Kayastha girl from Kanpur, a student of the American Film Institute Conservatory who had returned to make a film on the development model of Gujarat and Narendra Modi’s rising popularity among NRIs across the world.”

Comments

TRENDING

Addressing caste discrimination in US higher education: Rutgers report sparks controversy

In a surprise move, an American university has published a "controversial" report titled "Caste-Based Discrimination in US Higher Education and at Rutgers". The report has sparked debate, as no sooner was it released than an Indian diaspora advocacy group, CasteFiles, filed a complaint against Rutgers University and Prof. Audrey Truschke, co-chair of the task force that prepared the report. The complaint, filed under Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleges violations of the right to education free from harassment and discrimination.

Modi govt distancing from Adanis? MoEFCC 'defers' 1500 MW project in Western Ghats

Is the Narendra Modi government, in its third but  what would appear to be a weaker avatar, seeking to show that it would keep a distance, albeit temporarily, from its most favorite business house, the Adanis? It would seem so if the latest move of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) latest to "defer" the Adani Energy’s application for 1500 MW Warasgaon-Warangi Pump Storage Project is any indication. Quoting the September 27 MoEFCC's Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) meeting,  released on October 2, a senior scholar-activist of the top environmental advocacy group South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) has  reported  that in a "respite" to forest dwelling communities, fragile biodiversity and community conservation areas, the EAC has "rejected" the Adani application for project. However, the window for continuing with the controversial project hasn't been entirely closed. To quote Parineeta Dandekar, the ...

NHRC failing to 'effectively address' human rights violations: NGO groups tell UN-linked body

In a joint submission to the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions' (GANHRI's) Sub Committee on Accreditation (SCA), two civil society groups -- All India Network of NGOs and Individuals working with National and State Human Rights Institutions (AiNNI) and Asian NGO Network on National Human Rights Institutions (ANNI) --  have said that the  National Human Rights Commission's (NHRC's) accreditation, deferred in  2016, 2023, and 2024, fails to find space on its website. In their submission to the top global body which coordinates the relationship between NHRIs and the United Nations human rights system, AiNNI and ANNI said, the accreditation status of NHRC "has not been updated" since 2017, and as of September 21, 2024, the "website falsely states that the NHRC has retained its 'A' accreditation status from SCA for four consecutive five-year terms." They added, such omission diminishes "civil society's trust" in N...

Will Supreme Court also come forward to end legally-sanctioned segregation on religious lines in Gujarat?

My Vadodara-based activist-friend, Jagdish Patel, who has long championed the cause of the victims of silicosis, a deadly occupational disease, has forwarded to me an interesting blog by the executive editor of Pulitzer Center, Marina Walker Guevara, written in the context of the U.S. election results, in which Donald Trump has won.

ICT services exports: Despite India's 8% growth rate, China with 19% giving 'stiff competition'

A World Bank report, while praising India, a “middle-income” country driving the surge in internet users across the globe, states that if in 2018, only one in five Indians used the internet, by 2022 there was already “a staggering 170 percent growth in internet users”. But a deeper look in the report suggests two things: One, Indian IT business is facing stiff competition from China, and two, insofar as speed is internet speed is concerned, India has far to go.

Two persons with old typewriters off SLC's fashionable street, writing poems on postcards!

A few days back, after taking a round of beautiful hills surrounding Salt Lake City (SLC), we drove down to a popular, somewhat fashionable spot -- Harvey Milk Blvd -- not very far from the Down Town. We visited a few shops, where mainly souvenirs were being sold, and also a few sex toys! Finally, we visited an ice cream parlour, where we tasted Italian ice cream. It is a well decorated parlour, with different coloured lovely goodies  hanging across the restaurant. I took a lemon flavoured ice cream -- really liked it. The parlour is called Dolcetti Gelato. Thereafter, while returning to take the car, we found two persons sitting on outdoor chairs, with old manual typewriters on makeshift tables. They were typing out exactly the same way I used to in 1980s to do my stories before faxing them from Moscow to Patriot office in Delhi.

When Congress leaders in Gujarat forgot to remember Jawaharlal Nehru on November 14

It was November 14, Jawaharlal Nehru’s 135th birth anniversary. While the national leaders everywhere – ranging from Congress’ bigwigs to Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh – paid their tributes to the India’s first Prime Minister who also happened to be one of the most important freedom fighters, I was a little surprised: The Congress leaders in my state, Gujarat, seemed to ignore him at the place where mediapersons were called to interact with them.