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SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN / the hindu.
At stake is not so much the individual guilt or innocence of Narendra Modi but the need to unearth and dismantle a system of rule which could allow so many innocent people to be massacred. Photo: P.V. Sivakumar.
The SIT's interest in questioning Narendra Modi for the Gujarat riots underlines the reason why the new Communal Violence Bill must embrace the command responsibility doctrine.
The Special Investigation Team's decision to summon Narendra Modi marks the first time any judicial or quasi-judicial body has seen fit to ask the Gujarat Chief Minister what exactly he was doing when murderous mobs took charge of his state in 2002.
From February 27 — when the Sabarmati Express was attacked by a mob at Godhra — to mid-March, by which time the worst of the targeted violence was over, more than 1,500 Muslims lost their lives across Gujarat. The Justice Nanavati Commission is probing the matter and criminal cases stemming from the violence are at various stages of completion. Despite these, there has, as yet, been no proper accounting for the mass killing and destruction of property. Disturbed by the lack of investigative and prosecutorial enthusiasm within Gujarat, as evidenced by speedy acquittals of the accused, the Supreme Court transferred two cases outside the State. It set up the SIT to help with the probe into a number of high profile incidents. It also put the State government on notice for its failure to punish the guilty, describing Mr. Modi and his colleagues as “modern day Neros” who chose to look the other way while Gujarat burned.
Any society built on the foundations of law would not require the widow of a victim to petition the highest court of the land in order to investigate the reasons behind the state's failure to protect the life of its citizens during those fateful days. The fact that the apex court's intervention was necessary is itself an indictment of the Chief Minister, under whose watch such large-scale death and destruction took place, and under whose leadership, eight years on, justice continues to be elusive.
The petition filed by Zakia Jaffrey and the Citizens for Justice and Peace asks questions that any honest investigator probing the violence would want to ask. At stake is not so much the individual guilt or innocence of Mr. Modi but the need to unearth and dismantle a system of rule which could allow so many innocent people to be massacred.
The petition, pursuant to which the SIT now wants to question Mr. Modi, began life in 2006 as a criminal complaint filed with the Director-General of Police in Ahmedabad by Ms Jaffrey and the CJP. They wanted a First Information Report to be registered against 62 individuals, including Mr. Modi, his ministers and senior police officials and bureaucrats for their role in the 2002 violence. With the police refusing to file an FIR — a requirement under Indian law — the petitioners approached the Gujarat High Court and then the Supreme Court, which last year asked the SIT to look into the matter.
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Some pointed questions................................................................................................
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