Cornering Modi

Chief Minister Narendra Modi in Gandhinagar on August 2.-SAM PANTHAKY/AFP

After seven year of arrogant confidenc, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat is now nervously looking over its shoulder. Chief Minister Narendra Modi seems a little wary after the Supreme Court gave the green signal to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to question him and a few others regarding the 2002 post-Godhra riots.

On April 27, the Supreme Court ordered the SIT to take steps as required in law to probe a complaint that Modi, his Cabinet colleagues, senior police officials and bureaucrats had orchestrated the post-Godhra communal riots. The order was in response to a petition filed by Zakia Jaffrey and the Citizens for Justice and Peace. Zakia Jaffrey was seeking justice for her husband and former Congress Member of Parliament Ehsan Jaffrey and 39 others who were killed in Ahmedabads Gulberg Housing Society during the riots. The complaint also alleged that those who deposed before the Justice Nanavati Commission that was inquiring into the riots had been encouraged to give false evidence by Modi and other senior officials.

Zakia Jaffrey had initially sent the complaint to the then Gujarat Director-General of Police, but he did not register a first information report (FIR). Zakia Jaffrey then approached the Gujarat High Court, but it dismissed her petition saying there was insufficient evidence to back her allegations. The Supreme Court gave its order to the SIT in April to probe her complaint.

Kalu Maliwad, a former BJP MLA who had been acquitted in one of the riot cases but remains an accused in Zakia Jaffreys complaint, objected to the SITs right to question Modi and demanded a stay on the proceedings. Maliwad said the Supreme Court had asked the SIT to look into the complaint only and this did not constitute an investigation. He also demanded disclosure of the SITs confidential report on the riots, which was submitted to the Supreme Court as part of the ongoing investigations.

However, Justice D.H. Waghela of the Gujarat High Court dismissed Maliwads petition, calling it ill-founded and misconceived. He said: It is clear from the reading of the apex court order that it contains a direction for (the) SIT and it will take any step required so as to give its report to the apex court. The SIT, led by former Central Bureau of Investigation Director R.K. Raghavan, has time until December 31 to complete its investigation into Zakia Jaffreys complaint and an additional probe into nine other sensitive riot cases.

Coming as it does seven years after the riots, there are fears that the SITs work will be hampered by factors such as loss of physical evidence, having to rely on evidence that is possibly tampered with, and fearful witnesses. On this, an informed source said: The SIT has been scrupulously honest in its tasks. It has not and will not arm-twist witnesses into saying something that they do not want to. At the same time, it will give maximum protection to them to say what they want to, without fear or favour. This is the distinctive feature of the SITs work. It lays a huge emphasis on witness protection as per the apex courts directive.

Confident of the powers of the SIT, the source said: The greatest asset for the SIT is the authority it derives from the Supreme Court. It has all the powers conferred on an investigating agency by the Criminal Procedure Code. [The team] is highly skilled, motivated, tightly supervised and has excellent legal support from K.G. Menon, an eminent, unbiased criminal lawyer from Mumbai. The source also said that if required, [the team] will be further strengthened with inductions from outside.

Legal experts say there is adequate material for the SIT to proceed with. There are many unanswered questions that, if pursued, may corner the architects of the riots. Why, for instance, were the autopsies of the victims who died in the Sabarmati Express coaches carried out in such a rushed manner? The post-mortem should have been conducted in a government hospital and not, as they were, in the railway yard. Why were the bodies handed over to Jaideep Patel, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader? Jaideep Patel brought the bodies to Ahmedabad and paraded them in the streets after draping them in saffron. Why was he allowed to move the bodies to Ahmedabad and why did the police not stop him from this grisly procession? Why were police officers who tried to quell the riots transferred? Why were newspapers that spewed communal venom not gagged? These and many other questions await answers and should result in the prosecution of the guilty.

Describing the process ahead in general terms, the source said: The first step is to collect all the evidence in support of the allegations. Then, move on to obtain all that contradicts them. Finally, the investigators will be required to sift all the evidence to come to an honest conclusion. In all this, extreme integrity and high powers of logic are required.

While the green signal to the SIT was viewed as part of a slow-grinding legal process, the arrests of Jaideep Patel and BJP MLA Mayaben Kodnani made the public realise that the SIT meant business. Until then, there was a casual attitude to any investigation into the riots. The Nanavati Commission had given a clean chit to the Ministers and the officials, so the general perception was that the victims would have to forget for good all that had happened. With the SIT in action now, it is going to be different because Modi will be under the scanner, said Achyut Yagnik of the Centre for Social Knowledge and Action. And, as an informed source pointed out, a Commission of Inquiry does not have all the facilities of an investigation agency such as the SIT. It can at best record evidence, whereas the SIT can do searches, and so on.

When Mayaben Kodnani was arrested, she was Minister of State for Women and Child Welfare. She had to resign when her anticipatory bail was cancelled by the High Court. She and Jaideep Patel were arrested by the SIT on March 27 under Sections 302, 120B and 149 of the IPC in connection with the killing of 11 people at Naroda Gaam on February 28, 2002. Mayaben Kodnani is also an accused in the Naroda Patiya massacre in which 96 people were killed. The dramatic impact of the arrest and imprisonment of a Minister and a prominent VHP leader was not lost either on the party or on the public.

From being a party that had a mocking do-your-best-we-dont-care attitude to the riot survivors, the Gujarat unit of the BJP has been brought down several notches. And while Modi is clearly still the leader, he has taken several hits this year. His political miscalculations cost the party the Rajkot parliamentary seat, which it had held for two decades. The latest has been the defeat in the Junagadh civic elections in July. After the Lok Sabha elections in which the BJP did not fare as well as it had hoped, Modi attempted to reach out to Muslims, whom he had been systematically alienating until then. He fielded five Muslim candidates in order to win over the large Muslim population in Junagadh, but they were all rejected by the electorate. Both Hindu and Muslim voters saw the move for what it was and in the end it was the Congress that won in Junagadh.

Commenting on Modis strategy, Mona G. Mehta, who is researching democracy and identity politics in Gujarat as part of her doctoral studies in political science at the University of Chicago, says: It is interesting that Modi felt the need to field so many Muslim candidates in Junagadh. His strategy did not work because his traditional Hindutva voters went against him, while Muslims had no reason to trust him. More importantly, Modis attempt to woo Muslims in Junagadh reveals his anxieties about his increasingly uncertain political future.

But while all this shows a slip in Modis fortunes, it is certainly not his downfall because the majority of the electorate still sees him as a charismatic leader. Mona Mehta says the party will suffer owing to the lack of internal democracy and Modis tendency to centralise power. But this aversion to developing a second level of leadership is in a way paying off. With no other leader, the State BJP has no alternative but to support Modi.

Strong anti-minority feelings still run deep in Gujarat. Whether or not these will affect the cooperation that the SIT requires for its investigations remains to be seen.