A team probing the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, western India, in 2002 has summoned the state's Hindu nationalist chief minister for questioning, an investigator said Thursday. This is the first time that Narendra Modi, long accused by human rights groups of turning a blind eye to the pogrom, has been called by investigators to answer questions about riots that killed around 2,000 Muslims.
"We have called the Gujarat chief minister" for questioning on March 21, R.K. Raghavan, chief of the investigation team appointed by India's Supreme Court, told AFP. The summons comes as a major embarrassment to Modi, who has always denied any role in the riots.
He is a prominent member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is often seen as a future prime minister of India. The order follows one by the Supreme Court to investigators last year to probe a complaint filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of ex-Congress party MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed on February 28, 2002.
Reports say Jafri was hacked to death and burnt by Hindu extremists who stormed the Gulbarg Society, a residential complex housing Muslim families in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city. Sixty-eight other Muslims were also killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre, one of many killings across Gujarat triggered by the death of 59 Hindu pilgrims in a train fire on February 27, 2002 that was blamed on Muslims.
An inquiry in 2005 concluded that the fire was accidental. Investigations into the riots commissioned by the Gujarat government have absolved the state police and government of collusion or allowing the rioters a free rein. But last March, Gujarat's Women and Child Welfare Minister Maya Kodnani was arrested on charges of leading a mob that killed more than 100 people during the riots, making her the highest-ranking state official to be detained.
Comments
Comments are closed.