Nanavati Commission Report : He who pays the piper calls the tune

The Nanavati commission report has aroused extreme reaction of being eyewash, partisan, murder of democracy and even creation of Narendra Modi for his own justification. Some believe that the Godhra incidents were state sponsored terrorism to garner votes for the election that took place ten months later. What is even more troubling is that some think that Modi is the cause of youths taking to terrorism and being radicalized for the way he has handled his state in the massacre of Muslims in 2002 as is evident in the way the commission conducted the inquiry and its composition and conclusion. The Nanavati commission report is diametrically opposed to the Railway minister’s appointed CU Banerjee commission report 2005 on the burning of the two compartments of the Sabarmati express on February 27, 2002. What is rubbing salt in the wound is how Justice GT Nanavati accompanied no other than Justice Akshay Mehta to the office of the chief minister of Gujarat to present the report. Mehta is the justice who set notorious killer of Naroda Patia Babu Bajrangi free when several other judges wanted to punish him and were transferred for dissenting with the chief minister. In fact one such judge had remarked that Bajrangi should be punished many times for the crimes he had allegedly, and by his own confession on camera, committed.

As is the wont of the right wing sangh privar they view the report as an exposure of a preplanned conspiracy and would like even the court proceedings to follow this line. CU Banerjee had found that the burning of the compartments was by accident and was not caused by petrol. The Railway departments have their own experience and knowledge of fire accidents. As the sangh privar wanted to blame the Christians for the murder of Lakhsmanand Saraswaty Swamy in Orissa and not the Mao extremists who claimed it, the government of Narendra Modi also wanted to blame Muslims and not the fire accident. It was a strategy designed to win election then round the corner.

There were non-governmental organizations that also probed the pogroms and the burning of the compartments. The Report by the International Initiative for Justice (IIJ) titled “Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat” says about the meeting at the residence of Modi in the night of February 27: The purpose of the two-hour meeting was to direct officials not to take action against the VHP mobs, should anything happen. Modi apparently made it clear that there would be justice for Godhra during the bandh and ordered that the police should not come in the way of “the Hindu backlash”. The Director General of Police, K Chakravarthy, is said to have persisted against such instruction, but he was silenced by Modi. ..It clearly indicates that the head of a state government had, by his directives, promoted lawlessness from February 28 by directing the police chiefs to keep their force under leash.” The next day the bandh called by VHP started and the genocide of Muslims was in full swing for three consecutive days and there was resurgence of the same on March 15 the day of sheeladaan when the movement for building the temple at Ayodhya was scheduled. The resultant inferno engulfed many districts of the state leading to the torture and killing of more than 2000 Muslim, among them women and girls gang raped and burnt alive. 1150 hotels of Muslims were destroyed in Ahmedabad alone. The figure of looting and burning of other commercial establishments is astronomical.

Modi ala his party and the privar is extreme righ-wing authoritarian nationalist opposed to minorities. When he appointed the commission the single term of reference for inquiry was to unearth the conspiracy behind the burning of Sabarmati express. This by itself precludes the probability of any accident. Since the submission of the first part of the report the right-wing saffron groups have made it clear that they believe there was conspiracy and the courts must follow suit in dispensing justice in the light of this finding. Everything must fall into that line. First they blamed that it was petrol and when the truth came out that it was kerosene they just substituted. The witnesses were also manipulated by the investigating agencies to suit their purpose. Even the names of the victims had to be changed because there were some Muslim passengers of the fated compartment who perished along with their fellow Hindu compatriots. Even the forensic expert from Ahmedabad laboratory who opined that the fire could not have been started by any inflammable liquid thrown from outside, was ignored. It was also clear in the morning of February 27 that the train caught fire when it was stationary on a raised part of the track. It was quite raised above the ground level around both the sides to prevent a crowd from gathering there. Therefore it is improbable that there was any crowd as alleged by the government official line.

When will the full truth come out in the open? There is no hope of it as long as the BJP and Modi rule the state.