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class="left-corner"> <div class="vantage-slug"><div class="view view-opinions view-id-opinions view-display-id-block_4 view-dom-id-11"> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-field-blog-slug-value"> <span class="field-content">FROM THE ARCHIVES</span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="story-cat"></div> <div class="vantage"><h2>Sanjiv Bhatt, the IPS Officer from Gujarat who was Sacked Yesterday, on Modi's Role in the Attack on Gulburg Society</h2></div> <div class="clear-block"> <div class="subhheading"></div><div class="authorndate">By <a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/profile/143">VINOD K. JOSE</a> | <span class="date-display-single">August 20, 2015</span></div><div class="full-image-view"><div class="show-image" style="display:block"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][A mob in Ahmedabad on 1 March 2002.]" title="A mob in Ahmedabad on 1 March 2002." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/ap0203010657.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/ap0203010657.jpg" alt="" title="" width="680" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-caption">A mob in Ahmedabad on 1 March 2002.</div><div class="f-credit">MANISH SWARUP / AP PHOTO</div></div><div class="show-image-10859" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][A mob in Ahmedabad on 1 March 2002.]" title="A mob in Ahmedabad on 1 March 2002." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/ap0203010657.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/ap0203010657.jpg" alt="" title="" width="680" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-caption">A mob in Ahmedabad on 1 March 2002.</div><div class="f-credit">MANISH SWARUP / AP PHOTO</div></div></div> <div class="share-with"> <span class="st_facebook_hcount" displaytext="Facebook"></span> <span class="st_twitter_hcount" displaytext="Tweet"></span>  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725js_/https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>  <g:plusone href="http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/sanjiv-bhatt-ips-officer-gujarat-sacked-yesterday-modis-role-attack-gulburg-society"></g:plusone> <div class="print-email"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/print/5587">Print</a>|<a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/printmail/5587">E-Mail</a>|</div><div class="single-paged">Single Page</div></div> <script type="text/javascript">var switchTo5x=false;</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725js_/http://w.sharethis.com/button/buttons.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript">stLight.options({publisher:'8014eb0d-feae-4f08-9056-b8b78a153569'});</script> <div class="fullpage-body"><div class="detailBody"><div class="view view-story-page-views view-id-story_page_views view-display-id-block_2 view-dom-id-1"> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-body"> <div class="field-content"><p><em>Yesterday, the <u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/2002-godhra-riots-suspended-ips-officer-sanjiv-bhatt-sacked-says-decision-came-after-sham-inquiry/" target="_blank">state government in Gujarat sacked</a></u> Sanjiv Bhatt, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who was the former state deputy commissioner (Intelligence) of Gujarat. The order from the home ministry that was issued on 13 August followed the Gujarat government’s recommendation for Bhatt’s dismissal on 11 charges that included “staying absent from duty unauthorisedly and defying orders of superior officer” among others. In his deposition before the GT Nanavati-Akshay Mehta commission— that was looking into the 2002 Godhra riots—<u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/-told-modi-gulberg-attack-was-coming-he-kept-mum-/791828/" target="_blank">Bhatt had testified against the state government</a></u>. He had alleged that the state intelligence bureau was communicating real-time information about the rising tension in Gulburg society, a mostly Muslim upper-class neighborhood in Ahmedabad, and the subsequent threat to its residents, to Narendra Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat. He also claimed that Modi had asked top police officers in the state to allow Hindus “to vent out their anger.” In this excerpt from </em>Emperor Uncrowned<em> from our March 2012 issue, Vinod K Jose reports on what came to pass at Gulburg society, and why Bhatt claimed that the state government was implicit in the communal attacks that followed. </em></p> <p>One day in early February 2002, a 12-year-old girl named Anika, the daughter of a senior engineer at Larsen and Toubro in Surat, got word she would be giving a dance performance at her school’s annual day on 1 March. It was to be her first dance in costume, and Anika insisted that her grandparents, who lived in Ahmedabad, should come to Surat to see her on stage. Her grandfather assured Anika he would certainly be there to see her perform.</p> <p>Two days before Anika’s performance, on 27 February, 58 people—many of them women and children—were killed on a train passing through Godhra, 160 kilometres east of Ahmedabad. The train was carrying members of the VHP and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, who were returning from Ayodhya after celebrating the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and initial reports suggested that a mob of Muslims in Godhra had executed a pre-planned attack on the coach.</p> <p>As word began to spread from Godhra—and pictures and video from the scene hit the airwaves—fury mounted, led by the activists of the VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS, baying for revenge. By the evening, the VHP called for a statewide bandh the next day, which was endorsed by the ruling BJP.</p> <p>That same night, Ehsan Jafri, a 72-year-old former MP for Ahmedabad, called his granddaughter Anika in Surat with some disappointing news. Ensconced in his home in Gulburg Society, a mostly Muslim upper-middle class neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, Jafri, a veteran Congress politician, already sensed it would be risky to attempt a journey to Surat the next day. On the phone, he told Anika he wouldn’t be able to come. “But it’s just a shutdown, and he should make it,” she protested to her mother.</p> <p>At around noon on 28 February, Anika called her grandfather again. “Have you not started?” she asked him. “<em>Beta</em>, the situation is not good here,” Jafri answered. “There are mobs everywhere.” He told her he needed to put the phone down, since he had a lot of calls to make.</p> <p>A huge mob had already gathered around Gulburg Society, armed with petrol bombs, cycle chains and swords, shouting slogans like “Take revenge and slaughter the Muslims.” Many of Jafri’s neighbours, as well as Muslims from neighbouring slums, had come to his house seeking safety, expecting that his status as a former member of Parliament would afford them protection. “He must have made over a hundred phone calls for help,” Jafri’s wife, Zakia, told me. He called the Gujarat director-general of police, the Ahmedabad police commissioner, the state chief secretary and dozens of others, pleading for their intercession. A witness who survived the carnage later told a court that Jafri even called Narendra Modi: “When I asked him what Modi said, [Jafri] said there was no question of help, instead he got abuses.” Word of Jafri’s frantic calls for help even reached Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani in Delhi: a BJP insider close to Modi, who was with Advani on 28 February, told me that the BJP leader had even called Modi’s office himself to ask about Jafri.</p> <p>By 2:30 pm, the mobs had broken through the gates of the housing society, and a flood of men converged on Jafri’s home. Women were raped and then burned alive; men were made to shout “Jai Shri Ram”, and then cut to pieces; children were not spared. According to records later submitted in court, Jafri was stripped and paraded naked before the attackers cut off his fingers and legs and dragged his body into a burning pyre. The official police report indicates that 59 people were murdered in Gulburg Society, though independent inquiries put the number at 69 or 70. Jafri’s wife, Zakia, and a few others who had locked themselves in an upstairs room survived.</p> <p>To this day, Modi maintains that he had no knowledge of the events at Gulburg Society until he was briefed by police officers later that evening. But Sanjiv Bhatt, who was then the state deputy commissioner (Intelligence), says that Modi is lying. (Modi and his administration have vigorously contested Bhatt’s account, as well as the testimony given by several other police and government officials.) Bhatt insists that Modi, who also served as home minister, was in regular contact with the senior police and intelligence leadership throughout the day, and well-informed of events on the ground. Bhatt told me that he spoke with Modi over the phone several times before 2 pm, and reported that a mob had circled Gulburg, and that he met Modi at his office in the afternoon to report that the situation demanded immediate intervention.</p> <p>“His response was very strange,” Bhatt told me. “He listened and then said, ‘Sanjiv, try to find out if in the past Jafri has been in the habit of opening fire.’”</p> <p>“Outside the chief minister’s office, in the corridor, I bumped into the former chief minister Amarsinh Choudhary and former home minister Naresh Rawal,” Bhatt continued, referring to two Congress leaders. “Naresh Rawal was my minister earlier, so we talked. They told me Gulburg Ehsanbhai has been giving frantic calls, and they came to meet Modi. I said I had briefed the CM, but you also go and tell him,” Bhatt told me.</p> <p>“I then got a call on my cellphone from my informer on the site at Gulburg,” Bhatt continued, “telling me that Jafri had opened fire. I was surprised. And when I reached my office, a short report was lying on the table saying Jafri opened fire in self-defence. That was when I realised that this man [Modi] knows things even before I came to know of things.”</p> <p>An extract from <em>Emperor Uncrowned </em>published in <em>The Caravan’s</em> March 2012 issue. Read the <u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/emperor-uncrowned" target="_blank">story in full</a></u> here.</p></div> </div> <div class="views-field-phpcode"> <span class="field-content"><div class="shortbioview"><p><strong>Vinod K. Jose </strong>is the Executive Editor of <em>The Caravan</em>.</p> <p style="line-height: 15pt; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Arial; color: gray; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div></div><div class="detail-body"><div class="detailBody"><p><em>Yesterday, the <u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/2002-godhra-riots-suspended-ips-officer-sanjiv-bhatt-sacked-says-decision-came-after-sham-inquiry/" target="_blank">state government in Gujarat sacked</a></u> Sanjiv Bhatt, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who was the former state deputy commissioner (Intelligence) of Gujarat. The order from the home ministry that was issued on 13 August followed the Gujarat government’s recommendation for Bhatt’s dismissal on 11 charges that included “staying absent from duty unauthorisedly and defying orders of superior officer” among others. In his deposition before the GT Nanavati-Akshay Mehta commission— that was looking into the 2002 Godhra riots—<u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/-told-modi-gulberg-attack-was-coming-he-kept-mum-/791828/" target="_blank">Bhatt had testified against the state government</a></u>. He had alleged that the state intelligence bureau was communicating real-time information about the rising tension in Gulburg society, a mostly Muslim upper-class neighborhood in Ahmedabad, and the subsequent threat to its residents, to Narendra Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat. He also claimed that Modi had asked top police officers in the state to allow Hindus “to vent out their anger.” In this excerpt from </em>Emperor Uncrowned<em> from our March 2012 issue, Vinod K Jose reports on what came to pass at Gulburg society, and why Bhatt claimed that the state government was implicit in the communal attacks that followed. </em></p> <p>One day in early February 2002, a 12-year-old girl named Anika, the daughter of a senior engineer at Larsen and Toubro in Surat, got word she would be giving a dance performance at her school’s annual day on 1 March. It was to be her first dance in costume, and Anika insisted that her grandparents, who lived in Ahmedabad, should come to Surat to see her on stage. Her grandfather assured Anika he would certainly be there to see her perform.</p> <p>Two days before Anika’s performance, on 27 February, 58 people—many of them women and children—were killed on a train passing through Godhra, 160 kilometres east of Ahmedabad. The train was carrying members of the VHP and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, who were returning from Ayodhya after celebrating the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and initial reports suggested that a mob of Muslims in Godhra had executed a pre-planned attack on the coach.</p> <p>As word began to spread from Godhra—and pictures and video from the scene hit the airwaves—fury mounted, led by the activists of the VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS, baying for revenge. By the evening, the VHP called for a statewide bandh the next day, which was endorsed by the ruling BJP.</p> <p>That same night, Ehsan Jafri, a 72-year-old former MP for Ahmedabad, called his granddaughter Anika in Surat with some disappointing news. Ensconced in his home in Gulburg Society, a mostly Muslim upper-middle class neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, Jafri, a veteran Congress politician, already sensed it would be risky to attempt a journey to Surat the next day. On the phone, he told Anika he wouldn’t be able to come. “But it’s just a shutdown, and he should make it,” she protested to her mother.</p> <p>At around noon on 28 February, Anika called her grandfather again. “Have you not started?” she asked him. “<em>Beta</em>, the situation is not good here,” Jafri answered. “There are mobs everywhere.” He told her he needed to put the phone down, since he had a lot of calls to make.</p> <p>A huge mob had already gathered around Gulburg Society, armed with petrol bombs, cycle chains and swords, shouting slogans like “Take revenge and slaughter the Muslims.” Many of Jafri’s neighbours, as well as Muslims from neighbouring slums, had come to his house seeking safety, expecting that his status as a former member of Parliament would afford them protection. “He must have made over a hundred phone calls for help,” Jafri’s wife, Zakia, told me. He called the Gujarat director-general of police, the Ahmedabad police commissioner, the state chief secretary and dozens of others, pleading for their intercession. A witness who survived the carnage later told a court that Jafri even called Narendra Modi: “When I asked him what Modi said, [Jafri] said there was no question of help, instead he got abuses.” Word of Jafri’s frantic calls for help even reached Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani in Delhi: a BJP insider close to Modi, who was with Advani on 28 February, told me that the BJP leader had even called Modi’s office himself to ask about Jafri.</p> <p>By 2:30 pm, the mobs had broken through the gates of the housing society, and a flood of men converged on Jafri’s home. Women were raped and then burned alive; men were made to shout “Jai Shri Ram”, and then cut to pieces; children were not spared. According to records later submitted in court, Jafri was stripped and paraded naked before the attackers cut off his fingers and legs and dragged his body into a burning pyre. The official police report indicates that 59 people were murdered in Gulburg Society, though independent inquiries put the number at 69 or 70. Jafri’s wife, Zakia, and a few others who had locked themselves in an upstairs room survived.</p> <p>To this day, Modi maintains that he had no knowledge of the events at Gulburg Society until he was briefed by police officers later that evening. But Sanjiv Bhatt, who was then the state deputy commissioner (Intelligence), says that Modi is lying. (Modi and his administration have vigorously contested Bhatt’s account, as well as the testimony given by several other police and government officials.) Bhatt insists that Modi, who also served as home minister, was in regular contact with the senior police and intelligence leadership throughout the day, and well-informed of events on the ground. Bhatt told me that he spoke with Modi over the phone several times before 2 pm, and reported that a mob had circled Gulburg, and that he met Modi at his office in the afternoon to report that the situation demanded immediate intervention.</p> <p>“His response was very strange,” Bhatt told me. “He listened and then said, ‘Sanjiv, try to find out if in the past Jafri has been in the habit of opening fire.’”</p> <p>“Outside the chief minister’s office, in the corridor, I bumped into the former chief minister Amarsinh Choudhary and former home minister Naresh Rawal,” Bhatt continued, referring to two Congress leaders. “Naresh Rawal was my minister earlier, so we talked. They told me Gulburg Ehsanbhai has been giving frantic calls, and they came to meet Modi. I said I had briefed the CM, but you also go and tell him,” Bhatt told me.</p> <p>“I then got a call on my cellphone from my informer on the site at Gulburg,” Bhatt continued, “telling me that Jafri had opened fire. I was surprised. And when I reached my office, a short report was lying on the table saying Jafri opened fire in self-defence. That was when I realised that this man [Modi] knows things even before I came to know of things.”</p> <p>An extract from <em>Emperor Uncrowned </em>published in <em>The Caravan’s</em> March 2012 issue. Read the <u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/emperor-uncrowned" target="_blank">story in full</a></u> here.</p> </div></div> <div class="shortbioview"><p><strong>Vinod K. Jose </strong>is the Executive Editor of <em>The Caravan</em>.</p> <p style="line-height: 15pt; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Arial; color: gray; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div><div class="paging"></div> <div class="text-size-bottom"><div class="views-as">View as</div><div class="single-paged">Single Page</div></div> <div class="story-tags"> <div class="story-block1"><div class="view view-story-related-tag view-id-story_related_tag view-display-id-block_4 view-dom-id-2"> <div class="view-header"> <h3 class="subject-heading">More From This Section</h3> </div> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/being-modern-indian-hard-work-excerpt-cosmopolitans">“Being a modern Indian is hard work”: An Excerpt From ‘The 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href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/why-firstpost-being-asked-refrain-criticising-three-top-leaders-bjp">Why is Firstpost Being Asked to Refrain from Criticising Three Top Leaders from the BJP?</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-5 views-row-odd"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/unending-fallout-unilever-thermometer-factory-kodaikanal">The Unending Fallout of Unilever’s Thermometer Factory in Kodaikanal</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-6 views-row-even views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/question-who-truly-freed-india">The Question of Who Truly Freed India</a></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="comment_count">READER'S COMMENTS [0]</div> <div id="comments"> <div class="box"> <h2>Leave 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class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/opinions/reportage">Reportage</a></span> </div> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/doing-needful-essar-industry-influence">Doing the Needful</a></span> </div> <div class="views-field-field-story-dop-value"> <span class="field-content"><div class="story-created">By <span class="by"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/profile/66">KRISHN KAUSHIK</a></span> | <span class="date-display-single">1 August 2015</span></div></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div id="block-views-story_datails-block_1" class="clear-block block block-views"> <h2><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/opinions" class="block-title-link">OPINIONS</a></h2> <div class="content"><div class="view view-story-datails view-id-story_datails view-display-id-block_1 view-dom-id-4"> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-field-story-include-fid"> <div class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/blinkered-justice-aseemanand-hindu-terror"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150823125725im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_details_right/blinkered-justice_photo-by-vivek-singh_the-caravan-magazine_august-2015_01.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-story_details_right imagecache-default imagecache-story_details_right_default"/></a></div> </div> <div class="views-field-phpcode-1"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150823125725/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/opinions/perspectives">Perspectives</a></span> </div> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a 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